These two hated each other at this moment, and they were men of might after their kind.  The hatred of the better man was the greater.  Not from a sense of personal wrong, but—­

Three hours later Hagar was hard at work in his studio.  Only those who knew him intimately could understand him in his present mood.  His pale, brooding, yet masculine face was flushed, the blue of his eyes was almost black, his hair, usually in a Roman regularity about his strong brow, was disorderly.  He did not know the passage of time.  He had had no breakfast.  He had read none of his letters—­they lay in a little heap on his mantelpiece—­he was sketching upon the canvas the scene which had possessed him for the past ten or eleven hours.  An idea was being born, and it was giving him the distress of bringing forth.  Paper after paper he had thrown away, but at last he had shaped the idea to please his severe critical instinct, and was now sketching in the expression of the girl’s face.  His brain was hot, his face looked tired, but his hand was steady, accurate and cool—­a shapely hand which the sun never browned, and he was a man who loved the sun.

He drew back at last.  “Yes, that’s it,” he said.  “It’s right, right.  His face shall come in later.  But the heart of the thing is there.”

The last sentence was spoken in a louder tone, so that some one behind him heard.  It was Mrs. Detlor.  She had, with the young girl who had sat at her feet the evening before, been shown into the outer room, had playfully parted the curtains between the rooms and entered.  She stood for a moment looking at the sketch, fascinated, thrilled.  Her yes filled with tears, then went dry and hot, as she said in a loud whisper, “Yes, the heart of the thing is there.”

Hagar turned on her quickly, astonished, eager, his face shining with a look superadded to his artistic excitement.

She put her finger to her lip, and nodded backward to the other room.  He understood.  “Yes, I know,” he said, “the light comedy manner.”  He waved his hand toward the drawing.  “But is it not in the right vein?”

“It is painfully, horribly true,” she said.  She looked from him to the canvas, from the canvas to him, and then made a little pathetic gesture with her hands.  “What a jest life is!”

“A game—­a wonderful game,” he replied, “and a wicked one, when there is gambling with human hearts.”

Then he turned with her toward the other room.  As he passed her to draw aside the curtain she touched his arm with the tips of her fingers so lightly—­as she intended—­that he did not feel it.  There was a mute, confiding tenderness in the action more telling than any speech.  The woman had had a brilliant, varied, but lonely life.  It must still be lonely, though now the pleasant vista of a new career kept opening and closing before her, rendering her days fascinating yet troubled, her nights full of joyful but uneasy hours.  The game thus far had gone against her.  Yet she was popular, merry and amiable!