"I suppose you will go out like a candle," interrupted Jack. "Total disappearance of a rising English artist; and of the portrait, what? Shall we think it is you? Will it walk about and talk? Will it get your vitality?"
Frank got quickly out of his chair and stood before them. His thin, tall figure looked almost ghostly in the strange half-light, and he spoke rapidly and excitedly.
"That is exactly what I am afraid of," he said. "I am afraid--I confess it--I am afraid of many things about this portrait, and that is one of them. I began to paint myself once before--I have never told even Margery this--but I had to stop. But this afternoon several things made themselves irresistible, and I must try again. I was in bad health when I tried before, and one evening when I went into the studio and saw it--it was more than half finished--I had a sudden giddy feeling that I did not know which was me--the portrait or myself. I knew I was on the verge of something new and unknown, that if I went on with it I should go mad or go to heaven; and when I moved towards it I saw it--I _did_ see it--take a step towards me."
"Looking-glass," said Margery. "Go on, dear."
[Illustration: "'I AM AFRAID--I CONFESS IT'"]
"Then I was frightened. I ran away. Next day I came back and tore the picture into shreds. But now I am braver. Besides, brave or not, I must do it. I lost a great deal, I know, by not going on with it, but I could not. Oh yes, you may laugh if you like, but it is true. You may even say that what I lost was exactly what one always does lose when one is afraid of doing something. One loses self-command. One is less able to do the thing next time one tries. I lost all that, but I lost a great deal more: I lost the chance of knowing what happens to a man if he parts with himself."
"Don't be silly, Frank," said Margery, suddenly. "How can a man part with himself?"
"In two ways at least. He may go mad or he may die. I dare say it doesn't matter much, if one only has produced something worth producing; but it frightened me."
Despite herself, perhaps because fear is the most contagious of diseases, Margery felt a little frightened, too, about this new portrait. But she rallied.
"When the time comes for us to die we die," she said, "and we can't help it. But we can all avoid being very silly while we live--at least, you can, and you are the case in point."