in his
absence in an adjoining studio, Colton had come and gone, the only
record of his visit being a mass of roses he himself had placed
beneath his mother's portrait. Once he surprised the young man
standing before it looking up into the eyes as if waiting for her to
speak. Incidents like these showed his better and more sympathetic
nature and drew Adam to him the closer.

And the growth of the friendship was not all on one side. Not only was
Gregg's type of man absolutely new to the young financier, but his
workshop was a never-ending surprise. The fact that neither bonds nor
stocks, nor anything connected with them, was ever discussed inside
its tapestried walls, opened up for him new vistas in life. The latest
novel might be gone into or a character in a recent play; or the
rendering of a symphony, or some fresh discovery in science, but
nothing of gain. What struck him as more extraordinary still was the
air of repose that was everywhere apparent, so different from his own
busy life, and at any hour of the day, too. This was apparent not only
in the voices, but in the attitude and bearing of the men who formed
the painter's circle of friends.

Sometimes he would find Macklin, the sculptor--up from his atelier in
the basement--buried in a chair and a book, pipe in mouth, before
Gregg's fire--had been there for hours when Phil entered. Again he
would catch the sound of the piano as he mounted the stairs, only to
discover Putney, the landscape painter, running his fingers over the
keys, while Adam stood before his easel touching his canvas here or
there; or he would interrupt old Sonheim, who kept the book-shop at
the corner, and who had known Adam for years--while he read aloud this
and that quotation from a musty volume, Adam stretched out at full
length on his divan, the smoke of his cigarette drifting blue in the
overhead light.

These restful contrasts to his own life interested and astonished him.
Since his father's death he had had few hours of real repose. While
not yet fifteen he had been thrown out into the world to earn his
bread. A successful earning, for he was already head of his firm, in
which his prospective father-in-law, Mr. Eggleston, the rich banker,
was special partner, and young Eggleston the junior member. An
honorable career, too, for the house stood high in the Street, and its
credit was above reproach in the commercial world, their company--the
Portage Copper Company, whose securities t