Of course we are perfectly aware that your wife must have every incomparable beauty under the sun united in her own exquisite person.But each new divinity you see and paint apparently fulfils, for the time being, this wondrous ideal; and, perhaps, if you wedded one, instead of painting her, she might continue permanently to fulfil it."Garth considered this in silence, his level brows knitted.At last he said: "Beauty is so much a thing of the surface.I see it, and admire it.I desire it, and paint it.When I have painted it, I have made it my own, and somehow I find I have done with it.All the time I am painting a woman, I am seeking for her soul.I want to express it on my canvas; and do you know, Miss Champion, I find that a lovely woman does not always have a lovely soul."Jane was silent.The last things she wished to discuss were other women's souls.
"There is just one who seems to me perfect, "continued Garth."I am to paint her this autumn.I believe I shall find her soul as exquisite as her body.""And she is--?" inquired Jane.
"Lady Brand."
"Flower!" exclaimed Jane."Are YOU so taken with Flower?""Ah, she is lovely," said Garth, with reverent enthusiasm."It positively is not right for any one to be so absolutely flawlessly lovely.It makes me ache.Do you know that feeling, Miss Champion, of perfect loveliness making you ache?""No, I don't," said Jane, shortly."And I do not think other people's wives ought to have that effect upon you.""My dear old chap," exclaimed Garth, astonished; "it has nothing to do with wives or no wives.A wood of bluebells in morning sunshine would have precisely the same effect.I ache to paint her.When Ihave painted her and really done justice to that matchless loveliness as I see it, I shall feel all right.At present I have only painted her from memory; but she is to sit to me in October.""From memory?" questioned Jane.
"Yes, I paint a great deal from memory.Give me one look of a certain kind at a face, let me see it at a moment which lets one penetrate beneath the surface, and I can paint that face from memory weeks after.Lots of my best studies have been done that way.Ah, the delight of it! Beauty--the worship of beauty is to me a religion.""Rather a godless form of religion," suggested Jane.
"Ah no," said Garth reverently."All true beauty comes from God, and leads back to God.'Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.' I once met an old freak who said all sickness came from the devil.I never could believe that, for my mother was an invalid during the last years of her life, and I can testify that her sickness was a blessing to many, and borne to the glory of God.But I am, convinced all true beauty is God-given, and that is why the worship of beauty is to me a religion.Nothing bad was ever truly beautiful; nothing good is ever really ugly."Jane smiled as she watched him, lying back in the golden sunlight, the very personification of manly beauty.The absolute lack of self-consciousness, either for himself or for her, which allowed him to talk thus to the plainest woman of his acquaintance, held a vein of humour which diverted Jane.It appealed to her more than buying coloured air-balls, or screaming because the duchess wore a mushroom hat.
"Then are plain people to be denied their share of goodness, Dal?"she asked.
"Plainness is not ugliness," replied Garth Dalmain simply."Ilearned that when quite a small boy.My mother took me to hear a famous preacher.As he sat on the platform during the preliminaries he seemed to me quite the ugliest man I had ever seen.He reminded me of a grotesque gorilla, and I dreaded the moment when he should rise up and face us and give out a text.It seemed to me there ought to be bars between, and that we should want to throw nuts and oranges.But when he rose to speak, his face was transfigured.
Goodness and inspiration shone from it, making it as the face of an angel.I never again thought him ugly.The beauty of his soul shone through, transfiguring his body.Child though I was, I could differentiate even then between ugliness and plainness.When he sat down at the close of his magnificent sermon, I no longer thought him a complicated form of chimpanzee.I remembered the divine halo of his smile.Of course his actual plainness of feature remained.It was not the sort of face one could have wanted to live with, or to have day after day opposite to one at table.But then one was not called to that sort of discipline, which would have been martyrdom to me.And he has always stood to my mind since as a proof of the truth that goodness is never ugly; and that divine love and aspiration shining through the plainest features may redeem them temporarily into beauty; and, permanently, into a thing one loves to remember.""I see," said Jane."It must have often helped you to a right view to have realised that so long ago.But now let us return to the important question of the face which you ARE to have daily opposite you at table.It cannot be Lady Brand's, nor can it be Myra's; but, you know, Dal, a very lovely one is being suggested for the position.""No names, please," said Garth, quickly."I object to girls' names being mentioned in this sort of conversation.""Very well, dear boy.I understand and respect your objection.You have made her famous already by your impressionist portrait of her, and I hear you are to do a more elaborate picture 'in the fall.'
