room, they say; and all the rest of his time he writes a book!" "A
perfect crank!"




CHAPTER V

THE COMEDY BEGINS

The Art Critic who had smiled was--like all men--a subject for pity
rather than for blame. An Irishman of real ability, he had started life
with high ideals and a belief that he could live with them. He had hoped
to serve Art, to keep his service pure; but, having one day let his acid
temperament out of hand to revel in an orgy of personal retaliation,
he had since never known when she would slip her chain and come home
smothered in mire. Moreover, he no longer chastised her when she came.
His ideals had left him, one by one; he now lived alone, immune from
dignity and shame, soothing himself with whisky. A man of rancour, meet
for pity, and, in his cups, contented. He had lunched freely before
coming to Blanca's Christmas function, but by four o'clock, the gases
which had made him feel the world a pleasant place had nearly all
evaporated, and he was suffering from a wish to drink again. Or it may
have been that this girl, with her soft look, gave him the feeling that
she ought to have belonged to him; and as she did not, he felt, perhaps,
a natural irritation that she belonged, or might belong, to somebody
else. Or, again, it was possibly his natural male distaste for the works
of women painters which induced an awkward frame of mind.

Two days later in a daily paper over no signature, appeared this little