Socrates.

"Each of us has a shadow in those places--in those streets!"

There certainly was a virus in that notion. One must either take it as a
jest, like Stephen; or, what must one do? How far was it one's business
to identify oneself with other people, especially the helpless--how far
to preserve oneself intact--'integer vita'? Hilary was no young person,
like his niece or Martin, to whom everything seemed simple; nor was
he an old person like their grandfather, for whom life had lost its
complications.

And, very conscious of his natural disabilities for a decision on a
like, or indeed on any, subject except, perhaps, a point of literary
technique, he got up from his writing-table, and, taking his little
bulldog, went out. His intention was to visit Mrs. Hughs in Hound
Street, and see with his own eyes the state of things. But he had
another reason, too, for wishing to go there ....




CHAPTER IV

THE LITTLE MODEL

When in the preceding autumn Bianca began her picture called "The
Shadow," nobody was more surprised than Hilary that she asked him to
find her a model for the figure. Not knowing the nature of the picture,
nor having been for many years--perhaps never--admitted into the