“Of course he did, Louis!  Mother is simply worrying herself ill over you; father is incredulous—­at least he pretends to be; but he has written me twice on the subject—­and I think you might just as well be told what anxiety and unhappiness your fascination for this girl is causing us all.”

Mrs. Collis was leaning far forward in her chair, forgetful of her pose; Neville stood silent, head lowered, absently mixing tints upon his palette without regard to the work under way.

When he had almost covered his palette with useless squares of colour he picked up a palette-knife, scraped it clean, smeared the residue on a handful of rags, laid aside brushes and palette, and walked slowly to the window.

It was snowing again.  He could hear the feathery whisper of the flakes falling on the glass roof above; and he remembered the night of the new year, and all that it had brought to him—­all the wonder and happiness and perplexity of a future utterly unsuspected, undreamed of.

And now it was into that future he was staring with a fixed and blank gaze as his sister’s hand fell upon his shoulder and her cheek rested a moment in caress against his.

“Dearest child,” she said tremulously, “I did not mean to speak harshly or without sympathy.  But, after all, shouldn’t a son consider his father and mother in a matter of this kind?”

“I have considered them—­tried to.”

Mrs. Collis dropped into an arm-chair.  After a few moments he also seated himself listlessly, and sat gazing at nothing out of absent eyes.

She said:  “You know what father and mother are.  Even I have something left of their old-fashioned conservatism clinging to me—­and yet people consider me extremely liberal in my views.  But all my liberality, all my modern education since I left the dear old absurdities of our narrow childhood and youth, can not reconcile me to what you threaten us with—­with what you are threatened—­you, your entire future life.”

“What seems to threaten you—­and them—­is my marriage to the woman with whom I’m in love.  Does that shock you?”

“The circumstances shock me.”

“I could not control the circumstances.”

“You can control yourself, Louis.”

“Yes—­I can do that.  I can break her heart and mine.”

“Hearts don’t break, Louis.  And is anybody to live life through exempt from suffering?  If your unhappiness comes early in life to you it will pass the sooner, leaving the future tranquil for you, and you ready for it, unperplexed—­made cleaner, purer, braver by a sorrow that came, as comes all sorrow—­and that has gone its way, like all sorrows, leaving you the better and the worthier.”

“How is it to leave her?”

He spoke so naturally, so simply, that for the moment his sister did not recognise in him what had never before been there to recognise—­the thought of another before himself.  Afterward she remembered it.