n he fell back a couple of paces, contemplating
it in silence with his head on one side, and so waited for his
friend's opinion.

But Dick was mute. Something in this picture woke up the pain of a
recent wound festering in his heart, and yet through all the smart and
tingling came a strange sensation of relief, like that with which a
styptic salves a sore.

"What do you think of it?" asked the artist. "I want your candid
opinion, Stanmore--impartial--unprejudiced, I tell you. I hope great
things from it. I believe it far and away the best I've painted yet.
Look into the work. O, it will stand inspection. You might examine it
with a microscope. Then, the conception, eh? And the drawing's not
amiss. A little more this way--you catch the outline of his eyebrow,
with the turn of the Rhymer's head."

"Hang the Rhymer's head!" replied Dick, "I don't care about it. I
won't look at it. I _can't_ look at it, man, with such a woman as
_that_ in the picture. Old boy, you've won immortality at last!"

But Simon's face fell.

"That's a great fault," he answered gravely. "The details, though
kept down as accessories to the whole, should yet be worked out so
carefully as to possess individual merit of their own. I see, though;
I see how to remedy the defect you have suggested. I can easily bring
him out by darkening the shadows of the background. Then, this fairy
at his elbow is paltry, and too near him besides. I shall paint her
out altogether. She takes the eye off my principal figures, and breaks
that grand line of light pouring in from the morning sky. Don't you
think so?"

But Dick gave no answer. With feverish thirst and longing, he was
drinking in the beauty of the Fairy Queen; and had not Simon Perkins
been the dullest of observers, and the least conceited of painters, he
must have felt intensely flattered by the effect of his work.

"So you like her," said he, after a pause, during which, in truth, he
had been considering whether he should not paint out the intrusive
fairy that very afternoon.

"Like her!" replied the other. "It's the image of the most beautiful
face I ever saw in my life; only it's softer and even more beautiful.
I'll tell you what, old fellow, put a price on that picture and I'll
have it, cost what it may! Only you must give me a little time," added
Dick somewhat ruefully, reflecting that he had spent a good deal of
money lately, and rent-day was still a long way off.

Simon smiled.

"I wonder