hands of a young man devoted to scholarly pursuits; Christie's were
stained with his trade, which he practised of necessity still, wooing
art only in his bye-hours. Harry's speech was decisive and simple;
Christie's was hesitating and a little fine, a little over-careful. He
was self-conscious, and as he talked he watched who listened, his
restless eyes glancing often towards Bessie. But this had a twofold
meaning, for while he talked of other things his faculty of observation
was at work; it was always at work as an undercurrent.

Loveliness of color had a perpetual fascination for him. He was
considering the tints in Bessie's hair and in the delicate, downy
rose-oval of her cheeks, and the effect upon them of the sunshine
flickering through the vine leaves. When the after-glow was red in the
west, the dark green cloth of the window-curtain, faded to purple and
orange, made a rich background for her fair head, and he beheld in his
fancy a picture that some day he would reproduce. On the tea-table he
had laid down a twig of maple, the leaves of which were curiously
crenated by some insect, and with it a clump of moss, and a stone
speckled in delicious scarlet and tawny patches of lichen-growth--bits
of Nature and beauty in which he saw more than others see, and had
picked up in his walk by Great-Ash Ford through the Forest to Brook.

"I live in hope of some lucky accident to give me the leisure and
opportunity for study; till then I must stick to my mechanical trade of
painting and graining," he was saying while his eyes roved about
Bessie's face, and his fingers toyed first with the twig of maple and
then with the pearled moss. "My father thinks scorn of art for a living,
and predicts me repentance and starvation. I tell him we shall see; one
must not expect to be a prophet in one's own country. But I am half
promised a commission at the Hampton Theatre--a new drop-scene. My