Chapter 14 - Page 2

to his servant to wait,
and going over to the table, sat down and wrote two letters.
One he put in his pocket, the other he handed to the valet.

"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr. Campbell
is out of town, get his address."

As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette and began sketching upon
a piece of paper, drawing first flowers and bits of architecture,
and then human faces. Suddenly he remarked that every face that
he drew seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward.
He frowned, and getting up, went over to the book-case and took
out a volume at hazard. He was determined that he would not think
about what had happened until it became absolutely necessary that
he should do so.

When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at
the title-page of the book. It was Gautier's Emaux et Camees,
Charpentier's Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching.
The binding was of citron-green leather, with a design of gilt
trellis-work and dotted pomegranates. It had been given
to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned over the pages,
his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire,
the cold yellow hand "du supplice encore mal lavee,"
with its downy red hairs and its "doigts de faune." He glanced
at his own white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite
of himself, and passed on, till he came to those lovely stanzas
upon Venice:

Sur une gamme chromatique,

Le sein de peries ruisselant,

La Venus de l'Adriatique

Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.

Les domes, sur l'azur des ondes

Suivant la phrase au pur contour,

S'enflent comme des gorges rondes

Que souleve un soupir d'amour.

L'esquif aborde et me depose,

Jetant son amarre au pilier,

Devant une facade rose,

Sur le marbre d'un escalier.

How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed to be
floating down the green water-ways of the pink and pearl city,
seated in a black gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains.
The mere lines looked to him like those straight lines of
turquoise-blue that follow one as one pushes out to the Lido.
The sudden flashes of colour reminded him of the gleam of
the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the tall
honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace,
through the dim, dust-stained arcades. Leaning back with
half-closed eyes, he kept saying over and over to himself:

Devant une facade rose,

Sur le marbre d'un escalier.

The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He remembered the autumn
that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred
him to mad delightful follies. There was romance in