Neville had begun to see less and less of Valerie West.

When she first returned from the country in September she had come to the studio and had given him three or four mornings on the portrait which he had begun during the previous summer.

But the painting of it involved him in difficulties entirely foreign to him--difficulties born of technical timidity of the increasing and inexplicable lack of self-confidence.

And deeply worried, he laid it aside, A dull, unreasoning anxiety possessed him.

Those who had given him commissions to execute were commencing to importune him for results.