Evening star., 1935-11-10

Stephen, you know, came of very good
family and had been extensively educated.
He was rather an artistic sort of fellow, too.
and didn't get on especially well with his
parents When he was only twenty he started
painting in Chelsea studio and married his
model His model was Catherine Silver i the
loveliest woman ever saw.
The two were quite happy together though
Stephens family quarrelled with him about
the marriage and wouldn't help him finan-
cially at all. He lived, daresay, chiefly on
her earnings - for she had very expensive
and select clientele among the best artists.
But of course they were both waiting until
he became famous - and having really
idyllic time meanwhile.
When the War came Stephen didn't want
to fight. He wasn't a bit like the other fellows
all shouting and yelling and cursing the
Germans. He hated war. and he hated still
more the thought of leaving his beautiful wife.
He used what family influence he could to
manoeuvre himself into Government depart
ment, and for time he did clerking in the
War Office But in 1916 the influence petered
out somehow or other and he was pitchforked
tIlC III lily. I1C WdS III OllC vi TIC
battles, and hell-fragment caught him full
in the face.
Of course he was in the hospital for many
months. The first time he saw himself in a
mirror he nearly went mad with fright He
tried to kill himself, believe. 1t was always
Catherine he was thinking of, and whether
she would be able to bear the sight of him
when thew met RiIt Catherine what
do you think she did when first they let her
see him in the hospital? She just held out
both her arms to him and kissed him on =
on what ought to have been his lips.
1t really did look as if they were both to be
given chance of renewing their old happi-
ness. They went back to the Chelsea studio,
and Stephens family relented and gave him
ample money to live on. They received
Catherine. too, and liked her very much -
how could they help it. in fact?
Mercifully, Stephens eyes were uninjured,
and there seemed no reason why he shouldn't
60 on painting = or why. in short the two of
them shouldn't pick up all the old threads of
life just where they had left them. We all
hoped, and believed, that that would happen.
But it didn't.
The trouble was, in the beginning. that
Stephen was morbidly sensitive about his
appearance. BY degrees that grew into
fendish jealousy = if Catherine so much as
smiled at the postman he flew into rage
he kept imagining that she hated him and was
falling in love with somebody else But she
wasn't. She wasn't that sort. But daresay
she began to feel the strain, for he often tor
mented both himself and her.
Once while was with them he held a lamp
up to his face and made himself more hideous
than ever by pulling grotesque faces Good
ness knows what he did when they we're
alone . Anybody but Stephen himself
could have seen that she was still madly in
love with him, but very gradually the way he
behaved, and, above all, his Internal jealousy.
began to play havoc with her nerves.
The crisis came one night after there had
been row over man named Archer. Archer
was a promising young artist who enlisted in
Ia and came back legless in II. Catherine
had often been his model, and when on his
return, he asked if he might finish study
that he had had to leave half-done when the
War began, she didn't want to refuse him,
although Stephen had made her give up all her
model work.
So she asked Stephen if he would mind her
obliging Archer (who had been a very good
friend of both of them and Stephen said