‘Very well!’ she exclaimed, addressing only Harold. ‘Very well! Have it your own way. Since you insist on being Harold, I’ll Harold you!’

Dusk had fallen before she laid on the last strokes. As she gave the renewed Harold a parting inspection, it seemed to her that she had shown him in his true colours.

The pure light of a Third Sunday in Lent revealed an interpretation of Saint Luke that came as a surprise even to the artist, and perfectly outraged the congregation. What had happened to their Beloved Physician? Whatever had come over Mrs Reverend? It seemed to the more imaginative of them that the Devil had got into the church overnight, leaving a strong smell of oil paints and a self-portrait.

‘I am very sorry, Florence,’ Geoffrey said at luncheon, ‘but I cannot possibly conduct divine service under the supervision of that malevolent cardsharper. I quite understand your feelings. As far as they are feelings of a parent, I share them, and as the feelings of an artist, I respect them. All the same, my dear, you must repaint Saint Luke before next Sunday. And before Evensong it would be as well to fill the altar vases with laurel, or some vigorous shrub of that kind.’

Florence readily admitted that Saint Luke had gone beyond the bounds of sacred art. ‘The trouble is,’ she 241pleaded, ‘I can’t paint a face unless it’s a likeness. And if it’s not to be Harold, who is it to be? I tried Pawsey, but Harold got the better of him—and even if he hadn’t, the village might have thought it not quite reverent, and Spider would have had every reason to be jealous and talk about favouritism.’

‘It would not be irreverent to paint me,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I shall sit to you to-morrow afternoon.’ On the Fourth Sunday in Lent, the congregation observed that Saint Luke was now the Reverend.

Rosalind had not gone to church. She was not equal to it. The energetic wrath that had whirled her across Europe evaporated in the climate of home. She lay in bed, weeping copiously, refusing all nourishment except cups of strong tea and anchovy toast, and incessantly talking of Harold. Not even the fact that she was bedded in her father’s dressing-room was able to distract her from what seemed an inveterate determination to be reminded of Harold by everything she saw or heard, including her father’s confident approaches to her door and his sighs of frustration as he went on toward the bathroom. She wept, and talked of Harold’s cynicism and her ruined life; and Geoffrey said, ‘My poor child, what you need is rest. Try to sleep a little,’ and went away; and Florence persisted in expatiating on all the other delightful, stirring things there are in the world besides husbands; and the children, that natural solace for the feelings of an injured wife, were no solace at all, for they had made friends with a pig farmer and talked of nothing but boars and farrowings.242