along with the emotional debris, a number of the faiths that were allied to his faith in her. Simply because she whom he had enshrined had proved false, he had distrusted all the other pedestals. His disgust with the studios had grown into a repugnance for paint, and that, as a matter of fact, was perhaps as well, for even the indulgent Casimir had never credited him with more than a nice little talent, which was certainly not enough to warrant a life of torture in its cultivation.
But a nice little talent in one field was not necessarily the final verdict; in other fields he might find unguessed resources. The mere fact that he was an incorrigible romantic bore witness to the play of great imaginative energy. If this energy could only be canalized, what hydraulic power might it not be capable of? At long last it occurred to him that he had behaved like a coward.
It was even possible, he argued, though his painfully convalescing heart rejected the imputation, that, like poor Mamie, his vanity had been the chief victim of the spring disaster. With half cruel levity he had tossed Mamie her "art"; and now, without levity, but with a trace of the cruelty with which he so often excoriated himself, he offered himself the same bitter prescription. You set out to save your soul, and you won't be satisfied till you do. But you'll never save it by putting commas in a list of fish that were pinched off the coast of Nova Scotia in the year 1884.
Yet his distaste for painting was rooted. No effort
