He might be perverse, yet he appealed to her profoundly! The years of his success had refined and civilised him no doubt, but they had tended to make him like anybody else.

Whereas this passionate accent of revolt--as of some fierce, helpless creature, struggling blindly in bonds of its own making--had perhaps restored to him that more dramatic element which his personality had possessed in his sulky, gifted youth.

He had expressed himself with a bitter force on the decline of his inspiration and the weakening of his will.

He was going to the dogs, he declared; had lost all his hold on the public; and had nothing more to say or to paint.

And she had been very, very sorry for him, but conscious all the time that he had never been so eloquent, and never in such good looks, what with the angry energy of the eyes, and the sweep of grizzled hair across the powerful brow, and the lines cut by life and thought round the vigorous, impatient mouth.