Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/89

 When once this conceit of his turning had lodged itself in Pendrel's brain the way our friend played with it would have exposed him perhaps more than anything else—had there been observation of him too—to that charge of apparent levity which we have rejoiced for him that there was no one to bring. He came and went, passed into the next room and then returned quickly, presented his own back to the chimney-piece and wheeled round on a sudden—all as if he might have caught his mystificator bringing off the trick. No other trick however was provably played on him but that, little by little and as dusk began to gather, he found himself interested almost to impatience, perplexed almost to pain. His companion on the wall indescribably lived, and yet lived only to cheat him. When he had at last in meditation fixed the ground of his complaint he found in it the quite defensible position that, painted as people are always painted, the subject would have had something to say to him. That was a contention valid enough, and one with which he was at last able to associate his grievance. He had somehow lost a friend by the perversity of the posture—he was so sure of the friend he should have gained had the face been presented.

The more he looked at everything else the less it was credible there should have been anything to hide. The subject had been young, gallant, generous; these things, even on the scant showing, 75