CHAPTER LXXVII.

FACE TO FACE.

“Signore Pittore! what brings a bird into the barn-yard?” said Lawrence Newt, as Arthur Merlin entered his office.

“The hope of some crumb of comfort.”

“Do you dip from your empyrean to the cold earth—­from the studio to a counting-room—­to find comfort?” asked Lawrence Newt, cheerfully.

Arthur Merlin looked only half sympathetic with his friend’s gayety.  There was a wan air on his face, a piteous look in his eyes, which touched Lawrence.

“Why, Arthur, what is it?”

“Do you remember what Diana said?” replied the painter.  “She said, ’I am sure that that silly shepherd will not sleep there forever.  Never fear, he will wake up.  Diana never looks or loves for nothing.’”

Lawrence Newt gazed at him without speaking.

“Come,” said Arthur, with a feeble effort at fun, “you have correspondence all over the world.  What is the news from Latmos?  Has the silly shepherd waked up?”

“My dear Arthur,” said Mr. Newt, gravely, “I told you long ago that he was dead to all that heavenly splendor.”

The two men gazed steadfastly at each other without speaking.  At length Arthur said, in a low voice,

“Dead?”

“Dead.”

As Lawrence Newt spoke the word the air far off and near seemed to him to ring again with that pervasive murmur, sad, soft, infinitely tender, “Good-by, Mr. Newt, good-by!”

But his eye was calm and his face cheerful.

“Arthur, sit down.”

The young man seated himself, and the older one drawing a chair to the window, they sat with their backs to the outer office and looked upon the ships.

“I am older than you, Arthur, and I am your friend.  What I am going to say to you I have no right to say, except in your entire friendship.”

The young man’s eyes glistened.

“Go on,” he said.

“When I first knew you I knew that you loved Hope Wayne.”

A flush deepened upon Arthur’s face, and his fingers played idly upon the arm of the chair.

“I hoped that Hope Wayne would love you.  I was sure that she would.  It never occurred to me that she could—­could—­”

Arthur turned and looked at him.

“Could love any body else,” said Lawrence Newt, as his eyes wandered dreamily among the vessels, as if the canvas were the wings of his memory sailing far away.

“Suddenly, without the least suspicion on my part, I discovered that she did love somebody else.”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “so did I.”

“What could I do?” said the other, still abstractedly gazing; “for I loved her.”

“You loved her?” cried Arthur Merlin, so suddenly and loud that Thomas Tray looked up from his great red Russia book and turned his head toward the inner office.

“Certainly I loved her,” replied Lawrence Newt, calmly, and with tender sweetness; “and I had a right to, for I loved her mother.  Could I have had my way Hope Wayne’s mother would have been my wife.”