pon the worst of
their aberrations.

Nick at any rate never ran his academy to earth nor so much as skirted
the suburb in question; never caught from the impenetrable background of
his life the least reverberation of flitting or of flirting, the
fainting esthetic ululation. There had been moments when he was even
moved to anxiety by the silence that poor Gabriel's own faculty of sound
made all about him--when at least it reduced to plainer elements (the
mere bald terms of lonely singleness and thrift, of the lean philosophic
life) the mystery he could never wholly dissociate from him, the air as
of the transient and occasional, the likeness to curling vapour or
murmuring wind or shifting light. It was, for instance, a symbol of this
unclassified state, the lack of all position as a name in cited lists,
that Nick in point of fact had no idea where he lived, would not have
known how to go and see him or send him a doctor if he had heard he was
ill. He had never walked with him to any door of Gabriel's own, even to
pause at the threshold, though indeed Nash had a club, the Anonymous, in
some improbable square, of which he might be suspected of being the only
member--one had never heard of another--where it was vaguely understood
letters would some day or other find him. Fortunately he pressed with
no sharpness the spring of pity--his whole "form" was so easy a grasp
of the helm of consciousness, which he would never let go. He would
never consent to any deformity, but would steer his course straight
through the eventual narrow pass and simply go down over the horizon.

He in any case turned up Rosedale Road one day after Miriam had left
London; he had just come back from a fortnight in Brittany, where he had
drawn refreshment from the tragic sweetness of--well, of everything. He
was on his way somewhere else--was going abroad for the autumn but was
not particular what he did, professing that he had come back just to get
Nick utterly off his mind. "It's very nice, it's very nice; yes, yes, I
see," he remarked, giving a little, general, assenting sigh as his eyes
wandered over the simple scene--a sigh which for a suspicious ear would
have testified to an insidious reaction.

Nick's ear, as we know, was already suspicious; a fact accounting for
the expectant smile--it indicated the pleasant apprehension of a theory
confirmed--with which he returned: "Do you mean my pictures are nice?"

"Yes, yes, your pictures and the whol