lso had her purposes.
At Saratoga, in the previous summer, Arthur Merlin had remarked her
incessant restlessness, and had connected it with the picture and the
likeness of somebody. But when afterward, in New York, he cleared up the
mystery and resolved who the somebody was, to his great surprise he
observed, at the same time, that the restlessness of Hope Wayne was gone.
From the months of seclusion which she had imposed upon herself he saw
that she emerged older, calmer, and lovelier than he had ever seen her.
The calmness was, indeed, a little unnatural. To his sensitive eye--for,
as he said to Lawrence Newt, in explanation of his close observation, it
is wonderful how sensitive an exclusive devotion to art will make the
eye--to his eye the calmness was still too calm, as the gayety had been
too gay.

In the solitude of his studio, as he drew many pictures upon the
canvas, and sang, and smoked, and scuffled across the floor to survey
his work from a little distance--and studied its progress through his
open fist--or as he lay sprawling upon his lounge in a cotton velvet
Italian coat, inimitably befogged and bebuttoned--and puffed profusely,
following the intervolving smoke with his eye--his meditations were
always the same. He was always thinking of Hope Wayne, and befooling
himself with the mask of art, actually hiding himself from himself:
and not perceiving that when a man's sole thought by day and night
is a certain woman, and an endless speculation about the quality of
her feeling for another man, he is simply a lover thinking of his
mistress and a rival.

The infatuated painter suddenly became a great favorite in society. He
could not tell why. Indeed there was no other secret than that he was a
very pleasant young gentleman who made himself agreeable to young women,
because he wished to know them and to paint them--not, as he wickedly
told Lawrence Newt, who winked and did not believe a word of it, because
the human being is the noblest subject of art--but only because he wished
to show himself by actual experience how much more charming in character,
and sprightly in intelligence, and beautiful in person and manner, Hope
Wayne was than all other young women.

He proved that important point to his perfect satisfaction. He punctually
attended every meeting of the Round Table, as Lawrence called the
meetings at which he and Arthur read and talked with Hope Wayne and Amy
Waring, that he might lose no opportuni