nd, if I wrote an article
on your frescoes for a London paper?"

"Mind!" exclaimed the artist, with a sudden revulsion of feeling in
favour of the journalist. "I should be delighted--flattered."

"No," said Griggs, coldly. "I shall not write as Miss Dalrymple talks.
But I shall try and do you justice, and that is a good deal, when one is
a serious artist, as you are."

Reanda was struck by the cool moderation of the words, which expressed
his own modest judgment of himself almost too exactly to be agreeable
after Gloria's unlimited praise. He thanked Griggs warmly, however, and
they shook hands before they parted.

CHAPTER XXII.

THREE months passed, and Reanda was intimate with the Dalrymples. It was
natural enough, considering the circumstances. They lived much alone,
and Reanda was like them in this respect, for he rarely went where he
was obliged to talk. During the day he saw much of Donna Francesca, but
when it grew dark in the early afternoons of midwinter, the artist was
thrown upon his own resources. In former years he had now and then done
as many of the other artists did, and had sometimes for a month or two
spent most of his evenings at the eating-house where he dined, in
company with half-a-dozen others who frequented the same establishment.
Each dropped in, at any hour that chanced to suit him, ate his supper,
pushed back his chair, and joined in the general conversation, smoking,
and drinking coffee or a little wine, until it was time to go home.
There were grey-headed painters who had hardly been absent more than a
few days in five and twenty years from their accustomed tables at such
places as the Falcone, the Gabbione, or the Genio. But Reanda had never
joined in any of these little circles for longer than a month or two,
by which time he had exhausted the stock of his companions' ideas, and
returned to solitude and his own thoughts. For he had something which
they had not, besides his greater talent, his broader intelligence, and
his deeper artistic insight. Donna Francesca's refining influence
exerted itself continually upon him, and made much of the common
conversation tiresome or disagreeable to him. A man whose existence is
penetrated by the presence of a rarely refined woman seldom cares much
for the daily society of men. He prefers to be alone, when he cannot be
with her.

Reanda believed that what he felt for Francesca was a devoted and almost
devout friendship. The fact that befor