Page:When It Was Dark.djvu/262

242 The little bust of the Hermes of Praxiteles, which stood on one of the bookcases, had been maltreated with a coarseness and vulgarity which hurt Basil like a blow. The delicate contour of the features, the pure white of the plaster, were soiled and degraded. The cheeks had been rouged up to the eyes, which were picked out in violet ink. The brows were arched with an "eyebrow pencil" and the lips with a vivid cardinal red.

Basil put down his portmanteau and grew very pale as he looked round on these and many other evidences of sordid and unlovely riot. His heart sank within him. He began to fear for Harold Spence.

Even as he looked round, Spence came into the room from his bed-chamber. He was dressed in a smoking jacket and flannel trousers. Basil saw at once that he had been drinking heavily. The cheeks were swollen under the pouch of the eye, he was unshaven, and his manner was full of noisy and tremulous geniality.

There are men in whom a week or two of sudden relapse into old and evil courses has an extraordinarily visible effect. Spence was one of them. At the moment he looked as the clay model compares with the finished marble.

Gortre was astounded at the change, but one thing the modern London clergyman learns is tact. The situation was obvious, it explained itself at once, and he nerved himself to deal with it warily and carefully. Spence himself was ill at ease as they went through the commonplaces of meeting. Then, when they were both seated by the fire and were smoking, he began to speak frankly.

"I can see you are rather sick, old man," he said. "Better have it out and done with, don't you think?"

"Tell me all about it, old fellow," said Gortre.

"Well, there isn't very much to tell, only when I came back from Palestine after all that excitement I felt