"But the other things we heard about?" said Miss Bonnicastle. "The what-d'ye-call 'ems, the figures----"
Kite shrugged his shoulders, and looked uneasy.
"Oh, pot-boilers! Poor stuff. Happened to catch people's eyes. Who told you about them?"
"Some man--I forget. And what are you doing now?"
"Oh, nothing. A little black-and-white for that thing," he pointed contemptuously to the paper. "Keeps me from idleness."
"Where are you going to live?"
"I don't know. I shall find a garret somewhere. Do you know of one about here?"
Olga's eyes chanced to meet a glance from Otway. She moved, hesitated, and rose from her chair. Kite and the Italian gazed at her, then cast a look at each other, then both looked at Otway, who had at once risen.
"Do you walk home?" said Piers, stepping towards her.
"I'd better have a cab."
It was said in a quietly decisive tone, and Piers made no reply. Both took leave with few words. Olga descended the stairs rapidly, and, without attention to her companion, turned at a hurried pace down the dark street. They had walked nearly a hundred yards when she turned her head and spoke.
"Can't you suggest some way for me to earn my living? I mean it. I must find something."
"Have you spoken to your uncle about it?" asked Piers mechanically.
"No; it's difficult. If I could go to him with something definite."
"Have you spoken to your cousin?"
Olga delayed an instant, and answered with an embarrassed abruptness.
"She's gone to Paris."
Before Piers could recover from his surprise, she had waved to an empty hansom driving past.
"Think about it," she added, "and write to me. I must do something. This life of loneliness and idleness is unbearable."
And Piers thought; to little purpose, for his mind was once more turned to Irene, and it cost him a painful effort to dwell upon Olga's circumstances. He postponed writing to her, until shame compelled him, and the letter he at length despatched seemed so empty, so futile, that he could not bear to think of her reading it. With astonishment he received an answer so gratefully worded that it moved his heart. She would reflect on the suggestions he had made; moreover, as he advised, she would take counsel frankly with the Doctor; and, whatever was decided, he should hear at once. She counted on him as a friend, a true friend; in truth, she had no other. He must continue to write to her, but not often, not more than once a fortnight or so. And let him be assured that she never for a moment forgot her lifelong debt to him.
This last sentence referred, no doubt, to her mother's letters. Dr. Derwent, it seemed, would make no acknowledgment of the service rendered him by a brother of the man whom he must regard as a pitiful scoundrel. How abhorred by him must be the name of Otway!
And could it be less hateful to his daughter, to Irene?
The days passed. A pleasant surprise broke the monotony of work and worry when, one afternoon, the office-boy handed in a card bearing the name Korolevitch. The Russian was spending a week in London, and Otway saw him several times; on one occasion they sat talking together till three in the morning. To Piers this intercourse brought vast mental relief, and gave him an intellectual impulse of which he had serious need in his life of solitude, ever tending to despondency. Korolevitch, on leaving England, volunteered to call upon Moncharmont at Odessa. He had wool to sell, and why not sell it to his friends? But he, as well as Piers, looked for profit of another kind from this happy acquaintance.
It was not long before Otway made another call upon Miss Bonnicastle, and at this time, as he had hoped, he found her alone, working. He led their talk to the subject of Kite.
"You ought to go and see him in his garret," said Miss Bonnicastle. "He'd like you to."
"Tell me, if you know," threw out the other, looking into her broad, good-natured face. "Is he still interested in Miss Hannaford?"
"Why, of course! He's one of the stupids who keep up that kind of thing for a lifetime. But 'he that will not when he may'! Poor silly fellow! How I should enjoy boxing his ears!"
They laughed, but Miss Bonnicastle seemed very much in earnest.
"He's tormenting his silly self," she went on, "because he has been unfaithful to her. There was a girl in Paris. Oh, he tells me everything! We're good friends. The girl over there did him enormous good, that's all I know. It was she that set him to work, and supplied him with his model at the same time! What better could have happened. And now the absurd creature has qualms of conscience!"
"Well," said Piers, smiling uneasily, "it's intelligible."
"Bosh! Don't be silly! A man has his work to do, and he must get what help he can. I shall pack him off back to Paris."
"I'll go and see him, I think. About the Italian, Florio. Has he also an interest?"
"In Olga? Yes, I fancy he has, but I don't know much about him. He comes and goes, on business. There's a chance, I think, of his dropping in for money before long. He isn't a bad sort--what do you think?"
That same afternoon Piers went in search of Kite's garret. It was a garret literally, furnished with a table and a bed, and little else, but a large fire burned cheerfully, and on the table, beside a drawing-board, stood a bottle of wine. When he had welcomed his visitor, Kite pointed to the bottle.
"I got used to it in Paris," he said, "and it helps me to work. I shan't offer you any, or you might be made ill; the cheapest claret on the market, but it reminds me of--of things."
There rose in Otway's mind a suspicion that, to-day at all events, Kite had found his cheap claret rather too seductive. His face had an unwonted warmth of colour, and his speech an unusual fluency. Presently he opened a portfolio and showed some of the work he had done in Paris: drawings in pen-and-ink, and the published reproductions of others; these latter, he declared, were much spoilt in the process work. The motive was always a nude female figure, of great beauty; the same face, with much variety of expression; for background all manner of fantastic scenes, or rather glimpses and suggestions of a poet's dreamland.
"You see what I mean?" said Kite. "It's simply Woman, as a beautiful thing, as a--a--oh, I can't get it into words. An ideal, you know--something to live for. Put her in a room--it becomes a different thing. Do you feel my meaning? English people wouldn't have these, you know. They don't understand. They call it sensuality."
"Sensuality!" cried Piers, after dreaming for a moment. "Great heavens! then why are human bodies made beautiful?"
The artist gave a strange laugh of gratification.
"There you hit it! Why--why? The work of the Devil, they say."
"The worst of it is," said Piers, "that they're right as regards most men. Beauty, as an inspiration, exists only for the few. Beauty of any and every kind--it's all the same. There's no safety for the world as we know it, except in utilitarian morals."
Later, when he looked back upon these winter months, Piers could distinguish nothing clearly. It was a time of confused and obscure motives, of oscillation, of dreary conflict, of dull suffering. His correspondence with Olga, his meetings with her, had no issue. He made a thousand resolves; a thousand times he lost them. But for