in a frank, assuring tone,

"Arthur, speak out."

"Well," said the artist, with almost a girl's shyness in his whole
manner, "before you, at least, I can speak, and am not ashamed. I want
to know whether--you--think--"

He spoke very slowly, and stopped again. Before he resumed he saw
Lawrence Newt shake his head negatively.

"Why, what?" asked Arthur, quickly.

"I do not believe she ever will," replied the other, as if the artist had
asked a question with his eyes. He spoke in a very low, serious tone.

"Will what?" asked Arthur, his face burning with a bright crimson flush.

Lawrence Newt waited a moment to give his friend time to recover, before
he said,

"Shall I say what?"

Arthur also waited for a little while; then he said, sadly,

"No, it's no matter."

He seemed to have grown older as he sat looking from the window. His
hands idly played no longer, but rested quietly upon the chair. He shook
his head slowly, and repeated, in a tone that touched his friend to the
heart,

"No--no--it's no matter."

"But, Arthur, it's only my opinion," said the other, kindly.

"And mine too," replied the artist, with an inexpressible sadness.

Lawrence Newt was silent. After a few moments Arthur Merlin rose and
shook his hand.

"Good-by!" he said. "We shall meet to-night."

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

FINISHING PICTURES.

Arthur Merlin returned to his studio and carefully locked the door. Then
he opened a huge port-folio, which was full of sketches--and they were
all of the same subject, treated in a hundred ways--they were all Hope
Wayne.

Sometimes it was a lady leaning from an oriel window in a medieval tower,
listening in the moonlight, with love in her eyes and attitude, to the
music of a guitar, touched by a gallant knight below, who looked as
Arthur Merlin would have looked had Arthur Merlin been a gallant medieval
knight.

Then it was Juliet, pale and unconscious in the tomb; superb in
snow-white drapery; pure as an angel, lovely as a woman; but it was
Hope Wayne still--and Romeo stole frightened in, but Romeo was Arthur.

Or it was Beatrice moving in a radiant heaven; while far below, kneeling,
and with clasped hands, gazing upward, the melancholy Dante watched the
vision.

Or the fair phantom of Goethe's ballad looked out with humid, passionate
glances between the clustering reeds she pushed aside, and lured the
fisherman with love.

There were scores of such sketches, from romance, and his