as loath to make, or admit
that he had been too much afraid of high passions and great affairs,
had been fastidious and reserved only to dissipate his life on whims
and small interests--those seemed to him now too great refusals to
be contemplated without regret. His depression had reached its
lowest pitch when he had asked himself whether in love, as in life,
his error might not have been the same; and his passion, like the
rest, a thing without conviction, and thereby foredoomed to fail.
And it was a sensible alleviation of his mood when he could answer
this question finally with a firm negative.

Certainly, his vain desire for her personal presence, for the
consolation of her voice and eyes, was with him always, like the
ache of physical hunger or thirst--the one thing real in a world of
shadows.

Reaching this point one night, and relapsing, as was his wont, into
a vaguer mood of reminiscence, not wholly unpleasant, which the
darkness of the quiet room, lit only by the fire of logs, turned at
last into drowsiness, he looked up presently, with a sudden start,
to find Oswyn standing over him.

"I am sorry," said the painter; "I am afraid I have awaked you. The
room was so dark that I imagined you had gone to bed. I came to warm
myself before turning in."

Rainham shifted his chair a little, and watched the other as he
extended his thin, nervous hands to the glow.

"Don't apologize," he said; "I haven't so many visitors that I can
afford to miss the best of them. Besides, I was only half asleep, or
half awake, as you like to look at it."

"Oh, look at it!" cried Oswyn. "My dear fellow, I don't, and won't."

He pointed his words, which Rainham found meaningless enough, with
an impatient dig of his rusty boot against the fragrant wood, and
his friend considered him curiously in the light of the blaze which
his gesture had provoked.

"Is there anything wrong?" he asked. "More wrong than usual, I
mean."

"As you like to look at it," echoed the other; "a mare's nest--a
discovery of the blessed public--oh, but a discovery! Two or three
clever young newspaper men, with a tip from Paris to help them, have
made a discovery; they have unearthed a disreputable painting
genius, one Oswyn, and found the inevitable Jew of culture--you know
the type, all nose and shekels--to finance their boom. Oh, it's
genuine! I have Mosenthal's letter in my pocket--it was handed me by
McAllister--offering his gallery, the pick of Bond