by their frivolity. He tugged at his ragged red
beard for a moment or two while they were settling themselves.

"I'll show you this first," he said, taking up one of the canvases that
leant against the wall.

It was a beautiful sketch of a half-length figure, and represented
Stafford in the garb of a monk, gazing up with eager eyes, full of the
vision of the Eternal City beyond the skies. It was the face of a
devotee and a visionary, and yet it was full of strength and resolution;
and there was in it the look of a man who had put aside all except the
service and the contemplation of the Divine.

Ayre forgot to sneer, and Eugene murmured:

"Glorious! What a subject! And, old fellow, what an artist!"

"That is good," said Morewood quietly. "It's fine, but as a matter of
painting the other is still better. I caught him looking like that one
morning. He came out before breakfast, very early, into the garden. I
was out there, but he didn't see me, and he stood looking up like that
for ever so long, his lips just parted and his eyes straining through
the veil, as you see that. It may be all nonsense, but--fine, isn't it?"

The two men nodded.

"Now for the other," said Ayre. "By Jove! I feel as if I'd been in
church."

"The other I got only three or four days ago. Again I was a Paul
Pry,--we have to be, you know, if we're to do anything worth doing,--and
I took him while he sat. But I dare say you'd better see it first."

He took another and smaller picture and placed it on the easel, standing
for a moment between it and the onlookers and studying it closely. Then
he stepped aside in silence.

It was merely a head--nothing more--standing out boldly from a dark
background. The face was again Stafford's, but the presentment differed
strangely. It was still beautiful; it had even a beauty the other had
not, the beauty of youth and passion. The devotee was gone; in his place
was a face that, in spite of the ascetic cast of feature, was so lighted
up with the fire of love and longing that it might have stood for a
Leander or a Romeo. It expressed an eager yearning, that made it seem to
be craning out of the picture in the effort to reach that unknown object
on which the eyes were fixed with such devouring passion.

The men sat looking at it in amazement. Eugene was half angry, half
alarmed. Ayre was closely studying the picture, his old look of cynical
amusement struggling with a surprise which it was against his profe