CHAPTER XVI.
On the morning of the first day of June Neville came into his studio and found there a letter from Valerie: "DEAREST: I am not keeping my word to you; I am asking you for more time; and I know you will grant it.
"Jose Querida's death has had a curious effect on me.

I was inclined to care very sincerely for him; I comprehended him better than many people, I think.

Yet there was much in him that I never understood.

And I doubt that he ever entirely understood himself.
"I believe that he was really a great painter, Louis--and have sometimes thought that his character was mediaeval at the foundations--with five centuries of civilisation thinly deposited over the bed-rock....

In him there seemed to be something primitive; something untamable, and utterly irreconcilable with, the fundamental characteristics of modern man.
"He was my friend....