impersonal existence, and he gloried in the fact. But to the scraps of his
life's history, which he had spread before Joan in their absolute truth, he
had added this fiction of friendless loneliness, and it had worked a
wonder. He saw that he was growing to be much to her, and the problem lying
in his path rose again, as it had for a moment when Murdoch warned him in
jest against falling in love with Joan Tregenza. Dim suspicions crossed his
mind with greater frequency, and being now a mere remorseless savage,
hunting to its completion a fine picture, he made no effort to shut their
shadows from his calculation. Everything which bore even indirectly upon
his work received its share of attention; to mood must all sacrifices be
made; and now a new mood began to dawn in him. He knew it, he accepted it.
He had not sought it, but the thing was there, and Nature had sent it to
him. To shun it and fly from it meant a lie to his art; to open his arms to
it promised the destruction of a human unit. Barron was not the man to
hesitate between two such courses. If any action could heighten his
inspiration, add a glimmer of glory to his picture, or get a shadow more
soul into the painted blue eyes of the subject, he held such action
justified. For the present his mind was chaos on the subject, and he left
the future to work itself out as chance might determine.

His painting was all he concerned himself with, and should Nature
ultimately indicate that greater perfection might be achieved through
worship and even sacrifice at her shrine, neither worship nor sacrifice
would be withheld.




CHAPTER NINE
A WEDDING