Mr. Fentolin stopped painting.  His face was full of concern as he looked up at Hamel.

“My dear sir,” he exclaimed, “how can I apologise!  Of course she has gone out to lunch.  She has gone out to Lady Saxthorpe’s.  I remember the subject being discussed.  I myself, in fact, was the instigator of her going.  I owe you a thousand apologies, Mr. Hamel.  Let me make what amends are possible for your useless journey.  Dine with us to-night.”

“You are very kind.”

“A poor amends,” Mr. Fentolin continued.  “A morning like this was made for lovers.  Sunshine and blue sky, a salt breeze flavoured just a little with that lavender, and a stroll through my spring gardens, where my hyacinths are like a field of purple and gold, a mantle of jewels upon the brown earth.  Ah, well!  One’s thoughts will wander to the beautiful things of life.  There were once women who loved me, Mr. Hamel.”

Hamel looked doubtfully at the strange little figure in the chair.  Was this genuine, he wondered, a voluntary outburst, or was it some subtle attempt to incite sympathy?  Mr. Fentolin seemed almost to have read his thought.

“It is not for the sake of your pity that I say this,” he continued.  “Mine is only the passing across the line which age as well as infirmity makes inevitable.  No one in the world who lives to grow old, and who has loved and felt the fire of it in his veins, can pass that line without sorrow, or look back without a pang.  I am among a great army.  Well, well, I shall paint no more to-day,” he concluded abruptly.

“Where is your servant?” Hamel asked.

Mr. Fentolin glanced around him carelessly.

“He has wandered away out of sight.  He knows well how necessary solitude is to me if once I take the brush between my fingers —­solitude natural and entire, I mean.  If any one is within a dozen yards of me I know it, even though I cannot see them.  Meekins is wandering somewhere the other side of the Tower.”

“Shall I call him?”

“On no account,” Mr. Fentolin begged.  “Presently he will appear, in plenty of time.  There is the morning to be passed—­barely eleven o’clock, I think, now.  I shall sit in my chair, and sink a little down, and dream of these beautiful lights, these rolling, foam-flecked waves, these patches of blue and shifting green.  I can form them in my brain.  I can make a picture there, even though my fingers refuse to move.  You are not an aesthete, I think, Mr. Hamel?  The study of beauty does not mean to you what it did to your father, and my father, and, in a smaller way to me.”

“Perhaps not,” Hamel confessed.  “I believe I feel these things somewhere, because they bring a queer sense of content with them.  I am afraid, though, that my artistic perceptions are not so keen as some men’s.”

Mr. Fentolin looked at him thoughtfully.