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"He will be here soon, no doubt, and then you will see for yourself. He is Oswyn! I knew him in Paris better than I do now. He was in B 's studio; and B swore that he had a magnificent genius. He painted a monstrous picture which the Salon wouldn't hang; but B bought it, and hung it in his studio, where it frightened his models into fits.
From time to time he glanced vaguely at the letter which Oswyn had abandoned, and he wondered but quite inconsequently, and with no heart to make the experiment whether any further perusal of those disgraceful lines could explain or palliate the blunt obloquy of the writer's conduct. His concise, legal habit of mind forbade him to cherish any false illusions.
Presently his eyes again caught the head which had so struck his fancy. "Is that yours, Dick?" he asked. Lightmark followed the direction of his eyes to the opposite wall. "I believe it is," he remarked, with a shade of deprecation in his manner. "It is Oswyn. Don't you know him?" "I don't know him," said the other, sipping his thin Médoc. "But I think I should like to. What is he?"
Bullen in the superintendence of his household; for the child, with her sweet, shrill voice and her infantile chatter, had come to seem to him far more even than Oswyn, about whom there would always lurk something shadowy and unreal, a last link with the living; when the tide was nearly out, so that the stillness was not even broken by the long, lugubrious syren of a passing steamer, his isolation was borne in upon him with something of the sting of sharp, physical pain.
Oswyn said nothing, and Eve moved towards the door, discovering for the first time, on her way, the sleeping child. She stopped for a moment, and the other watched her with breathless curiosity, uncertain how far her knowledge might extend.
Oswyn paused upon the pavement, outside the showroom which Mosenthal called a gallery, gazing up the road towards Oxford Street, with a momentary appreciation of the subtile early evening charm, which lent so real a beauty even to a vista of commonplace shop-fronts and chimney-pots, straightening his bent figure, and wondering whither to betake himself.
There Eric demanded instant admittance for his men, the surrender of all treasure, sacred and profane, as well as of food and stores. This the sub-Prior proudly refusing in honour of the Virgin, Saint Cuthbert, and Saint Oswyn, a flight of arrows hissed over the parapet, torches were lit and flung against the gate; the fight became general.
Oswyn settled himself back in his chair, as one who has no regard for time, and rolled a cigarette, the animation with which he had spoken now only perceptible in the points of colour in either cheek.
What passed between them in the autumn of last year? Who was that woman?" He did not reply for a moment; but unconsciously his eyes met hers full, and in their brief encounter it was possible that many truths were silently told. Presently she continued: "You need not tell me, Mr. Oswyn. I can see your answer as plainly as if you had spoken. It is my husband "
Descending, he proceeded slowly to the chapel built by Oswald saint and king in honour of the mother of our Lord, and there before the shrine of Saint Oswyn prostrated himself in prayer. Long and earnestly he prayed, for it seemed to the Prior that the test of his acceptance was to be found in the continued absence of the Danes.
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