Lady Saxthorpe's. I remember the
subject being discussed. I myself, in fact, was the instigator of her
going. I owe you a thousand apologies, Mr. Hamel. Let me make what
amends are possible for your useless journey. Dine with us to-night."

"You are very kind."

"A poor amends," Mr. Fentolin continued. "A morning like this was made
for lovers. Sunshine and blue sky, a salt breeze flavoured just a little
with that lavender, and a stroll through my spring gardens, where my
hyacinths are like a field of purple and gold, a mantle of jewels upon
the brown earth. Ah, well! One's thoughts will wander to the beautiful
things of life. There were once women who loved me, Mr. Hamel."

Hamel looked doubtfully at the strange little figure in the chair. Was
this genuine, he wondered, a voluntary outburst, or was it some subtle
attempt to incite sympathy? Mr. Fentolin seemed almost to have read his
thought.

"It is not for the sake of your pity that I say this," he continued.
"Mine is only the passing across the line which age as well as infirmity
makes inevitable. No one in the world who lives to grow old, and who has
loved and felt the fire of it in his veins, can pass that line without
sorrow, or look back without a pang. I am among a great army. Well,
well, I shall paint no more to-day," he concluded abruptly.

"Where is your servant?" Hamel asked.

Mr. Fentolin glanced around him carelessly.

"He has wandered away out of sight. He knows well how necessary solitude
is to me if once I take the brush between my fingers--solitude natural
and entire, I mean. If any one is within a dozen yards of me I know it,
even though I cannot see them. Meekins is wandering somewhere the other
side of the Tower."

"Shall I call him?"

"On no account," Mr. Fentolin begged. "Presently he will appear,
in plenty of time. There is the morning to be passed--barely eleven
o'clock, I think, now. I shall sit in my chair, and sink a little down,
and dream of these beautiful lights, these rolling, foam-flecked waves,
these patches of blue and shifting green. I can form them in my brain. I
can make a picture there, even though my fingers refuse to move. You are
not an aesthete, I think, Mr. Hamel? The study of beauty does not mean
to you what it did to your father, and my father, and, in a smaller way
to me."

"Perhaps not," Hamel confessed. "I believe I feel these things
somewhere, because they bring a queer sense of content with them. I am
afrai