He thinks she was sent
to him from Paradise by his mother's spirit! He does, I assure you.'
'Wilderspin in love with a model!'
'Oh, not _a la_ Raphael.'
'If you think Wilderspin to be in love with any woman, you little
know what love is,' I exclaimed. 'He is in love with his art and with
that beautiful memory of his mother's self-sacrifice which has
shattered his reason, but built up his genius. Except as a means
towards the production of those pictures that possess him, no model
is anything more to him than his palette-knife. Shall you be alone
this evening?'
'This evening I dine at Sleaford's. To-morrow I am due in Paris.'
Wilderspin, who had now entered the studio, seemed genuinely pleased
to see me again, and told me that in a few days he should be able to
borrow 'Faith and Love' of its owner for the purpose of beginning a
replica of it, and hoped then to have the pleasure of showing it to
me.
'I observed Mrs. Gudgeon in the hall,' said he to Cyril. 'To think
that so unlovely a woman should, through an illusion of the senses,
seem to be the mere material mother of her who was sent to me from
the spirit-world in the very depths of my despair! Wonderful are the
ways of the spirit-world.
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