“I shall be discreet,” said Felix, “except to you.  To you I will say, Accept him outright.”

She had advanced to the open door-way, and she stood looking at him.  “I will go and dress and think of it,” she said; and he heard her moving slowly to her apartments.

Late in the afternoon the rain stopped, and just afterwards there was a great flaming, flickering, trickling sunset.  Felix sat in his painting-room and did some work; but at last, as the light, which had not been brilliant, began to fade, he laid down his brushes and came out to the little piazza of the cottage.  Here he walked up and down for some time, looking at the splendid blaze of the western sky and saying, as he had often said before, that this was certainly the country of sunsets.  There was something in these glorious deeps of fire that quickened his imagination; he always found images and promises in the western sky.  He thought of a good many things—­of roaming about the world with Gertrude Wentworth; he seemed to see their possible adventures, in a glowing frieze, between the cloud-bars; then of what Eugenia had just been telling him.  He wished very much that Madame M; auunster would make a comfortable and honorable marriage.  Presently, as the sunset expanded and deepened, the fancy took him of making a note of so magnificent a piece of coloring.  He returned to his studio and fetched out a small panel, with his palette and brushes, and, placing the panel against a window-sill, he began to daub with great gusto.  While he was so occupied he saw Mr. Brand, in the distance, slowly come down from Mr. Wentworth’s house, nursing a large folded umbrella.  He walked with a joyless, meditative tread, and his eyes were bent upon the ground.  Felix poised his brush for a moment, watching him; then, by a sudden impulse, as he drew nearer, advanced to the garden-gate and signaled to him—­the palette and bunch of brushes contributing to this effect.

Mr. Brand stopped and started; then he appeared to decide to accept Felix’s invitation.  He came out of Mr. Wentworth’s gate and passed along the road; after which he entered the little garden of the cottage.  Felix had gone back to his sunset; but he made his visitor welcome while he rapidly brushed it in.

“I wanted so much to speak to you that I thought I would call you,” he said, in the friendliest tone.  “All the more that you have been to see me so little.  You have come to see my sister; I know that.  But you have n’t come to see me—­the celebrated artist.  Artists are very sensitive, you know; they notice those things.”  And Felix turned round, smiling, with a brush in his mouth.

Mr. Brand stood there with a certain blank, candid majesty, pulling together the large flaps of his umbrella.  “Why should I come to see you?” he asked.  “I know nothing of Art.”

“It would sound very conceited, I suppose,” said Felix, “if I were to say that it would be a good little chance for you to learn something.  You would ask me why you should learn; and I should have no answer to that.  I suppose a minister has no need for Art, eh?”