Mrs. Franklyn, I now remembered,

has suggested to me in the library that I might perhaps write something

about the place, and I had taken it for one of her banal sentences and

paid no further attention. I realised now that it was said in earnest.

She wanted our interpretations, as expressed in our respective

‘talents’, painting and writing. Her invitation was explained. She

left us to ourselves on purpose.

‘I should like to tear them up,’ Frances was whispering behind me

with a shudder, ‘only I promised—’ She hesitated a moment.

‘Promised not to?’ I asked with a queer feeling of distress, my

eyes glued to the papers.

‘Promised always to show them to her first,’ she finished so low I

barely caught it.

I have no intuitive, immediate grasp of the value of paintings;

results come to me slowly, and though every one believes his own

judgment to be good, I dare not claim that mine is worth more than

that of any other layman, Frances had too often convicted me of gross

ignorance and error. I can only say that I examined these sketches

with a feeling of amazement that contained revulsion, if not actually

horror and disgust. They were outrageous. I felt hot for my sister, and

it was a relief to know she had moved across the room on some pretence

or other, and did not examine them with me. Her talent, of course, is

mediocre, yet she has her moments of inspiration —moments, that is to

say, when a view of Beauty not normally her own flames divinely through

her. And these interpretations struck me forcibly as being thus

‘inspired’—not her own. They were uncommonly well done; they were

also atrocious. The meaning in them, however, was never more than

hinted. There the unholy skill and power came in: they suggested so

abominably, leaving most to the imagination. To find such significance

in a bourgeois villa garden, and to interpret it with such delicate

yet legible certainty, was a kind of symbolism that was sinister, even

diabolical. The delicacy was her own, but the point of view was

another’s.

And the word that rose in my mind was not the gross description of

‘impure’, but the more fundamental qualification—’un-pure’.

In silence I turned the sketches over one by one, as a boy hurries

through the pages of an evil book lest he be caught.

‘What does Mabel do with them?’ I asked presently in a low tone, as

I neared the end. ‘Does she keep them?’

‘She makes notes about them in a book and then destroys them,’ was

the reply from the end of the room. I heard a sigh of relief. ‘I’m

glad you’ve seen them, Bill. I wanted you to— but was afraid to show

them. You understand?’

‘I understand,’ was my reply, though it was not a question intended

to be answered. All I understood really was that Mabel’s mind was as

sweet and pure as my sister’s, and that she had some good reason for

what she did. She destroyed the sketches, but first made notes! It was

an interpretation of the place she sought.