"Sometimes I can't but hope that it is concern of mind, without his knowing it."

Mrs. Toxer also knitted, and scratched, and counted.

"No, ma'am; much more likely concern of heart with a full consciousness of it. One, two, three--bless my soul! I'm always dropping a stitch."

Aunt Winnifred, who never dropped stitches, smiled pleasantly, and answered,

"Yes, indeed, and this time you have dropped a very great one."

Meanwhile Arthur's great picture advanced rapidly. Diana, who had looked only like a portrait of Hope Wayne looking out of a cloud, was now more fully completed. She was still bending from the clouds indeed, but there was more and more human softness in the face every time he touched it.

And lo! he had found at last Endymion. He lay upon a grassy knoll. Long whispering tufts sighed around his head, which rested upon the very summit of the mountain. There were no trees, no rocks. There was nothing but the sleeping figure with the shepherd's crook by his side upon the mountain top, all lying bare to the sky and to the eyes that looked from the cloud, and from which all the moonlight of the picture fell.

When Lawrence Newt came into the studio one morning, Arthur, who worked in secret upon his picture and never showed it, asked him if he would like to look at it. The merchant said yes, and seated himself comfortably in a large chair, while the artist brought the canvas from an inner room and placed it before him. As he did so, Arthur stepped a little aside, and watched him closely.

Lawrence Newt gazed for a long time and silently at the picture. As he did so, his face rapidly donned its armor of inscrutability, and Arthur's eyes attacked it in vain. Diana was clearly Hope Wayne. That he had seen from the beginning. But Endymion was as clearly Lawrence Newt! He looked steadily without turning his eyes, and after many minutes he said, quietly,

"It is beautiful. It is triumphant. Endymion is a trifle too old, perhaps. But Diana's face is so noble, and her glance so tenderly earnest, that it would surely rouse him if he were not dead."

"Dead!" returned Arthur; "why you know he is only sleeping."

"No, no," said Lawrence, gently, "dead; utterly dead--to her. If he were not, it would be simply impossible not to awake and love her. Who's that old gentleman on the wall over there?"

Lawrence Newt asked the same question of all the portraits so persistently that Arthur could not return to his Diana. When he had satisfied his curiosity--a curiosity which he had never shown before--the merchant rose and said good-by.

"Stop, stop!"

Lawrence Newt turned, with his hand upon the door.

"You like my picture--"

"Immensely. But if she looks forever she'll never waken him. Poor Endymion! he's dead to all that heavenly splendor."

He was about closing the door.

"Hallo!" cried Arthur.

Lawrence Newt put his head into the room.

"It's fortunate that he's dead!" said the painter.

"Why so?"

"Because goddesses never marry."

Lawrence Newt's head disappeared.

CHAPTER LXIV.

DIANA.

"Good-morning, Miss Hope."

"Good-morning, Mr. Merlin."

He bowed and seated himself, and the conversation seemed to have terminated. Hope Wayne was embroidering. The moment she perceived that there was silence she found it very hard to break it.

"Are you busy now?" said she.

"Very busy."

"As long as men and women are vain, so long your profession will flourish, I suppose," she replied, lifting her eyes and smiling.

"I like it because it tells the truth," replied Arthur, crushing his hat.

"It omitted Alexander's wry neck," said Hope.

"It put in Cromwell's pimple," answered Arthur.

They both smiled.

"However, that is not the kind of truth I mean--I mean poetic truth.

Michael Angelo's Last Judgment shows the whole Catholic Church."

Hope Wayne felt relieved, and looked interested. She did not feel so much afraid of the silence, now that Arthur seemed entering upon a disquisition. But he stopped and said,

"I've painted a picture."

"Full of poetic truth, I suppose," rejoined Hope, still smiling.

"I've come to ask you to go and see that for yourself."

"Now?"

"Now."

She laid aside her embroidery, and in a little while they had reached his studio. As Hope Wayne entered she was impressed by the spaciousness of the room, the chastened light, and the coruscations of rich color hanging upon the walls.

"It's like the garden of the Hesperides," she said, gayly--"such mellow shadows, and such gorgeous colors, like those of celestial fruits. I don't wonder you paint poetic truth."

Arthur Merlin smiled.

"Now you shall judge," said he.

Hope Wayne seated herself in the chair where Lawrence Newt had been sitting not two hours before, and settled herself to enjoy the spectacle she anticipated; for she had a secret faith in Arthur's genius, and she meant to purchase this great work of poetic truth at her own valuation.

Arthur placed the picture upon the easel and drew the curtain from it, stepping aside as before to watch her face.