ejaculate further general
approval; then he rose from the table, upon which Barty's books had
been displayed, and drawing forward an easel on which was a framed
canvas covered by some vivid oriental drapery, he arranged it
carefully with regard to the light. Then he caught away the drapery,
stepping back, quickly, from the easel.

"What do you think of that, Barty?"

Barty, who was short-sighted, stood up and adjusted his eye-glasses,
while he endeavoured to readjust his ideas, and to abandon the realms
of business for those of art.

"But you know, Larry," he apologised, "I know nothing about paintings.
You wouldn't know what tomfoolery I mightn't--" The apology broke
off abruptly.

"Oh, God!" he muttered, feeling, in the shock of meeting her eyes, as
if a sudden wind had swept his mind bare of business, of Larry, of all
things save Christian, "it's herself!"

His sallow face had turned a dull red. He moved back a step or two,
and then went forward again. The easel was low, and Barty was very
tall; he went on his knees, and gazed, speechless.

Thus might a devout Russian have greeted a lost icon, and worshipped,
silently, a re-found saint. Larry, equally absorbed, as any painter
will understand, in the contemplation of his work, took no heed of its
effect upon Barty.

"By Jove!" he murmured, drawing a big breath, "I wonder if I did it! I
don't feel as if I had--something outside me--" He stopped; he felt
as if Christian herself were there; he felt as if her arms were round
him, his head upon her bosom. He was giddy with emotion. Scarcely
knowing what he did he walked across the room, and stared out of the
window, looking across his own woods to the woods of Mount Music.

That morning he had said good-bye to her for three long days. She had
met him at the old stepping stones across the Ownashee, and she had
made him renew his promise of silence until her return; he was sorry
he couldn't tell old Barty; but no matter, nothing mattered, except
the marvel that she was his. He whispered adoration to her, breathing
her name again and again, crowning it, as with a wreath, with those
old, familiar adjectives that had so lately become intense with new
meaning for him; he forgot Barty, forgot even her portrait, as he
thought of herself.

Barty came over to him; the two young men, with their common secret,
suspected by neither, a secret that for one was a living ecstasy, and
for the other an impossible ideal, stood si