Pagina 314 van 490

For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his

lovely house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by

which he could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to

him at times to be almost too great to be borne. Upon the walls

of the lonely locked room where he had spent so much of his

boyhood, he had hung with his own hands the terrible portrait

whose changing features showed him the real degradation of his

life, and in front of it had draped the purple-and-gold pall as a

curtain. For weeks he would not go there, would forget the

hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart, his

wonderful joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere

existence. Then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of the

house, go down to dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay

there, day after day, until he was driven away.