"With commissions"—Cornelius Jagenal spoke as if Gilead Beck was a man of multitude, signifying many, and as if one commission was a thousand—"with commissions pouring in as they should, Brother Humphrey——"

"And the great Epic, the masterpiece of the century about to be published in the Grand Style, brother Cornelius, the only style which is worthy of its merits——"

"Something definite should be attempted, Humphrey——"

"You mean, brother——"

"With regard to——"

"With regard to Phillis Fleming."

They looked at each other meaningly and firmly. The little table was between them; it was past twelve o'clock; already two or three soda-water bottles were lying on it empty; and the world looked rosy to the poetic pair.

Humphrey was the first to speak after the young lady's name was mentioned. He removed the pipe from his mouth, threw back his head, stroked his long brown beard, and addressed the ceiling.

"She is," he said, "she is indeed a charming girl. Her outlines finely but firmly drawn; her colouring delicate, but strongly accentuated; the grouping to which she lends herself always differentiated artistically; her single attitudes designed naturally and with freedom; her flesh-tints remarkably pure and sweet; her draperies falling in artistic folds; her atmosphere softened as by the perfumed mists of morning; her hair tied in the simple knot which is the admiration and despair of many painters;—you agree with my rendering, brother Cornelius"—he turned his reflective gaze from the ceiling, and fixed his lustrous eyes, perhaps with the least little look of triumph, upon his brother—"my rendering of this incomparable Work?"

He spoke of the young lady as if she were a picture. This was because, immediately after receiving his commission, he bethought him of reading a little modern criticism, and so bought the Academy for a few weeks. In that clear bubbling fount of modern English undefiled, the Art criticisms are done with such entire freedom from cant and affectation that they are a pleasure to read; and from its pages every Prig is so jealously kept out, that the paper is as widely circulated and as popular as Punch; thus Humphrey Jagenal acquired a new jargon of Art criticism, which he developed and made his own.

Cornelius had been profiting by the same delightful and genial enemy to Mutual Admiration Societies. He was a little taken aback for a moment by the eloquence and fidelity of his brother's word-picture, but stimulated to rivalry. He made answer, gazing into the black and hollow depths of the empty fireplace, and speaking slowly as if he enjoyed his words too much to let them slip out too fast—

"She is all that you say, Humphrey. From your standpoint nothing could be better. I judge her, however, from my own platform. I look on her as one of Nature's sweetest poems; such a poem as defies the highest effort of the greatest creative genius; where the cadenced lines are sunlit, and as they ripple on make music in your soul. You are rapt with their beauty; you are saddened with the unapproachable magic of their charm; you feel the deepest emotions of the heart awakened and beating in responsive harmony. And when, after long and patient watching, the Searcher after the Truth of Beauty feels each verse sink deeper and deeper within him, till it becomes a part of his own nature, there arises before him, clad in mystic and transparent Coan robe, the spirit of subtle wisdom, long lying perdu in those magic utterances. She is a lyric; she is a sonnet; she is an epigram——"

"At least," interrupted Humphrey unkindly, cutting short his brother's freest flow, "at least she doesn't carry a sting."

"Then let us say an Idyl——"

"Cornelius, make an Idyl yourself for her," Humphrey interrupted again, because really his brother was taking an unfair advantage of a paltry verbal superiority. "Now that we have both described her—and I am sure, brother," he added out of the kindness of his heart, "no description could be more poetically true than your own—it would make even a stranger see Phillis standing in a vision before his eyes. But let us see what had better be done."

"We must act at once, Humphrey. We must call upon her at her guardian's, Mrs. L'Estrange, at Twickenham. Perhaps that lady does not know so many men of genius as to render the accession of two more to her circle anything but a pleasure and an honour. And as for our next steps, they must be guided by our finesse, by our knowledge of the world, our insight into a woman's heart, our—shall I say our power of intrigue, Humphrey?"

Then the Artist positively winked. It is not a gesture to be commended from an artistic point of view, but he did it. Then he chuckled and wagged his head.

Then the Poet in his turn also winked, chuckled, and wagged his head too.

"We understand each other, Humphrey. We always do."

"We must make our own opportunity," said the Artist thoughtfully. "Not together, but separately."

"Surely separately. Together would never do."

"We will go to bed early to-night, in order to be fresh to-morrow. Have you—did you—can you give me any of your own experiences in this way, Cornelius?"

The Poet shook his head.

"I may have been wooed," he said. "Men of genius are always run after. But as I am a bachelor, you see it is clear that I never proposed."

Humphrey had much the same idea in his own mind, and felt as if the wind was a little taken out of his sails. This often happens when two sister craft cruise so very close alongside of each other.

"Do not let us be nervous, Humphrey," the elder brother went on kindly. "It is the simplest thing in the world, I dare say, when you come to do it. Love finds out a way."

"When I was in Rome——" Humphrey said, casting his thoughts backwards thirty years.

"When I was in Heidelberg——" said Cornelius, in the same mood of retrospective meditation.

"There was a model—a young artist's model——"

"There was a little country girl——"

"With the darkest eyes, and hair of a deep blue-black, the kind of colour one seems only to read of or to see in a picture."

"With blue eyes as limpid as the waters of the Neckar, and light-brown hair which caught the sunshine in a way that one seldom seems to see, but which we poets sometimes sing of."

Then they both started and looked at each other guiltily.

"Cornelius," said Humphrey, "I think that Phillis would not like these reminiscences. We must offer virgin hearts."

"True, brother," said Cornelius with a sigh, "We must. Yet the recollection is not unpleasant."

They went to bed early, only concentrating into two hours the brandy-and-soda of four. It was a wonderful thing that neither gave the other the least hint of a separate and individual preference for Phillis. They were running together, as usual, in double harness, and so far as might be gathered from their conversation they were proposing to themselves that both should marry Phillis.

They dressed with more than usual care in the morning, and, without taking their customary walk, sat each in his own room till two o'clock, when Humphrey sought Cornelius in the Workshop.

They surveyed each other with admiration. They were certainly a remarkable pair, and, save for that little redness of the nose already alluded to, they were more youthful than one could conceive possible at the age of fifty. Their step was elastic; their eyes were bright; Humphrey's beard was as brown and silky, Cornelius's cheek as smooth, as twenty years before. This it is to lead a life unclouded and devoted to contemplation of Art. This it is to have a younger brother, successful, and never tired of working for his seniors.

"We are not nervous, brother?" asked Cornelius with a little hesitation.

"Not at all," said Humphrey sturdily, "not at all. Still, to steady the system, perhaps——"

"Yes," said Cornelius; "you are quite right, brother. We will."

There was no need of words. The reader knows already what was implied.

Humphrey led the way to the dining-room, where he speedily found a pint of champagne. With this modest pick-me-up, which no one surely will grudge the brethren, they started on their way.

"What we need, Cornelius," said Humphrey, putting himself outside the last drop—"What we need. Not what we wish for."

Then he straightened his back, smote his chest, stamped lustily with his right foot, and looked like a war-horse before the battle.

Unconscious of the approaching attack of these two conquering heroes, Phillis and Agatha L'Estrange were sitting in the shade and on the grass: the elder lady with some work, the younger doing nothing. It was a special characteristic with her that she could sit for hours doing nothing. So the modern Arabs, the gipsies, niggerdom in general, and all that large section of humanity which has never learned to read and write, are contented to fold their hands, lie down, and think away the golden hours. What they think about, these untutored tribes, the Lord only knows. Whether by degrees, and as they grow old, some faint intelligence of the divine order sinks into their souls, or whether they become slowly enwrapped in the beauty of the world, or whether their thoughts, always turned in the bacon-and-cabbage direction, are wholly gross and earthly, I cannot tell. Phillis's thoughts were still as the thoughts of a child, but as those of a child passing into womanhood: partly selfish, inasmuch as she consciously placed her own individuality, as every child does, in the centre of the universe, and made the sun, the moon, the planets, and all the minor stars revolve around her; partly unselfish, because they hovered about the forms of two or three people she loved, and took the shape of devising means of pleasing these people; partly artistic, because the beauty of the June afternoon cried aloud for admiration, while the sunshine lay on the lawns and the flower-beds, threw up the light leaves and blossoms of the passion-flower on the house-side, and made darker shadows in the gables, while the glorious river ran swiftly at her feet. The river of which she never tired. Other things lost their novelty, but the river never.

"I wish Jack Dunquerque were here," she said at last.

"I wish so, too," said Agatha. "Why did we not invite him, Phillis?"

Then they were silent again.

"I wish Mr. Beck would call," remarked Phillis.

"My dear, we do nothing but wish. But here is somebody—two young gentlemen. Who are they, I wonder?"

"O Agatha, they are the Twins!"

Phillis sprang from her seat, and ran to meet them with a most unaffected pleasure.

"This is Mr. Cornelius Jagenal," she said, introducing them to Agatha. "The Poet, you know." And here she laughed, because Agatha did not know, and Cornelius perked up his head and tried to look unconscious of his fame. "And this is Mr. Humphrey, the Artist." And then she laughed again, because Humphrey did exactly the same as Cornelius, only with an air of deprecation, as one who would say, "Never mind my fame for the present."

It was embarrassing for Mrs. L'Estrange, because she could not for her life recollect any Poet or Artist named Jagenal. The men and their work were alike unknown to her. And why did Phillis laugh? And what did the pair before her look so solemn about?

They were solemn partly from vanity, which is the cause of most of the grave solemnity we so much admire in the world, and partly because, finding themselves face to face with Phillis, they became suddenly and painfully aware that they had come on a delicate errand. Cornelius looked furtively at Humphrey, and the Artist glanced at the Poet, but neither found any help from his brother. Their courage, as evanescent as that of Mr. Robert Acres, was rapidly oozing out at their boots.

Phillis noted their embarrassment, and tried to put them at their ease. This was difficult; they were so inordinately vain, so self-conscious, so unused to anything beyond their daily experience, that they were as awkward as a pair of fantoccini. People who live alone get into the habit of thinking and talking about themselves; the Twins were literally unable to think or speak on any other subject.

Phillis, they saw, to begin with, was altered. Somehow she looked older. Certainly more formidable. And it was awkward to feel that she was taking them in a manner under her own protection before a stranger. And why did she laugh? The task which they discussed with such an airy confidence over the brandy-and-soda assumed, in the presence of the young lady herself, dimensions quite out of proportion to their midnight estimate. All these considerations made them feel and look ill at ease.

Also it was vexatious that neither of the ladies turned the conversation upon the subject nearest to each man's heart—his own Work. On the contrary, Phillis asked after Joseph, and sent him an invitation to come and see her; Mrs. L'Estrange talked timidly about the weather, and tried them on the Opera, on the Academy, and on the last volume of Browning. It was odd in so great an Artist as Humphrey that he had not yet seen the Academy, and in so great a Poet as Cornelius that he had not read any recent poetry. Then they tried to talk about flowers. The two city-bred artists knew a wall-flower from a cabbage and a rose from a sprig of asparagus, and that was all.

Phillis would not help either the Twins or Agatha, so that the former grew more helpless every moment. In fact, the girl was staring at them, and wondering to feel how differently she regarded men and manners since that first evening in Carnarvon Square, when they produced champagne in her honour, and drank it all up themselves.

She remembered how she had looked at them with awe; how, after a day or two, this reverence vanished; how she found them to be mere shallow wind-bags and humbugs, and regarded them with contempt; how she made fun of them with Jack Dunquerque; and how she drew their portraits.

And now—it was a mark of her advanced education—she looked at them with pity. They were so dependent on each other for admiration; they were so childishly vain; they were so full of themselves; and their daily life of sleep, drink, and boastful pretension showed itself to her experienced head as so mean and sordid a thing.

She came to the help of the whole party, and took the Twins for a walk among the flowers, flattering them, asking how Work got on, congratulating them on their good looks, and generally making things comfortable for them.

Presently she found herself on the sloping bank of the river, where she was wont to sit with Jack. Cornelius Jagenal alone was by her side. She looked round, and saw Humphrey standing before Mrs. L'Estrange, and occasionally glancing over his shoulder. And she noticed, then, a curiously nervous motion of her companion's hand; also that his cheek was twitching with some secret emotion. He looked older, too, she thought; perhaps that was the bright sunlight, which brought out the dells and valleys and the crow's-feet round his eyes.

He cleared his voice with an effort, and opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again, silent.

"You were going to say, Mr. Cornelius?"

"Yes. Will you sit down, Miss Fleming?"

"He is going to tell me about the Upheaving of Ælfred" thought Phillis. "And how does the Workshop get on?" she asked.

"Fairly well," he replied modestly. "We publish in the autumn. The work is to be brought out, you will be glad to learn, with all the luxury of the best illustrations, paper, print, and binding that money can procure."

"So that all you want is the poem itself," said Phillis, with a mischievous light in her eyes.

"Ye-es——" he winced a little. "As you say, the Epic itself alone is wanting, and that advances with mighty strides. My brother Humphrey—a noble creature is Humphrey, Miss Fleming——"

She bowed and smiled.

"Is he still hard at work? Always hard at work?" She laughed as she asked the question.

"His work is crushing him, Miss Fleming—may I call you Phillis?" He spoke very solemnly—"His work is crushing him."

"Of course you may, Mr. Cornelius. We are quite old friends. But I am sorry to hear that your brother is being crushed."

"Yesterday, Phillis—I feel to you already like a brother," pursued the Poet—"yesterday I discovered the secret of Humphrey's life. May I tell it to you?"

"If you please." She began to be a little bored. Also she noticed that Agatha wore a look of mute suffering, as if the Artist was getting altogether too much for her. "If you please; but be quick, because I think Mrs. L'Estrange wants me."

"I will tell you the secret in a few words. My brother Humphrey adores you with all the simplicity and strength of a noble artistic nature."

"Does he? You mean he likes me very much. How good he his! I am glad to hear it, Mr. Cornelius, though why it need be a secret I do not know."

"Then my poor brother—he is all loyalty, and brings you a virgin heart," (O Cornelius! and the model with the blue black hair!) "an unsullied name, and the bright prospects of requited genius—my brother may hope?"

Phillis did not understand one word.

"Certainly," she said; "I am sure I would like to see him hoping."

"I will tell him, sister Phillis," said Cornelius, nodding with a sunny smile. "You have made two men happy, and one at least grateful."

His mission was accomplished, his task done. It will hardly be believed that this treacherous bard, growing more and more nervous as he reflected on the uncertainty of the wedded life, actually came to a sudden resolution to plead his brother's cause. Humphrey was the younger. Let him bear off the winsome bride.

"It will be a change in our lives," he said. "You will allow me to have my share in his happiness?"

Phillis made no reply. Decidedly the Poet was gone distraught with overmuch reading and thought.

Cornelius, smiling, crowing, and laughing almost like a child, pressed her hand and left her, stepping with a youthful elasticity across the lawn. Humphrey, sitting beside Mrs. L'Estrange, was bewildering that good lady with a dissertation on colour À propos of a flower which he held in his hand. Agatha could not understand this strange pair, who looked so youthful until you came to see them closely, and then they seemed to be of any age you pleased to name. Nor could she understand their talk, which was pedantic, affected, and continually involved the theory that the speaker was, next to his brother, the greatest of living men.

If it was awkward and stupid sitting with Humphrey on a bench while he discoursed on Colour, it was still more awkward when the other one appeared with a countenance wreathed with smiles, and sat on the other side. Nor did there appear any reason why the one with the beard should suddenly break off his oration, turn very red in the face, get up, and walk slowly across the lawn to take his brother's place. But that is what he did, and Cornelius took up the running.

Humphrey sat down beside Phillis without speaking. She noticed in him the same characteristics of nervousness as in his brother. Twice he attempted to speak, and twice his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth.

"He is going to tell me that Cornelius adores me," she thought.

It was instinct. That was exactly what Humphrey—the treacherous Humphrey—had determined on doing. Matrimony, contemplated at close quarters and in the presence of the enemy, so to speak, lost all its charms. Humphrey thought of the pleasant life in Carnarvon Square, and determined, at the very last moment, that if either of them was to marry it should not be himself. Cornelius was the elder. Let him be married first.

"You are peaceful and happy here, Miss Fleming—may I call you Phillis?"

"Certainly, Mr. Humphrey. We are old friends, you know. And I am very happy here."

"I am glad"—he sighed heavily—"I am very glad indeed to hear that."

"Are you not happy, Mr. Humphrey? Why do you look so gloomy? And how is the Great Picture getting on?"

"The 'Birth of the Renaissance' is advancing rapidly—rapidly," he said. "It will occupy a canvas fourteen feet long by six high."

"If you have got the canvas, and the frame, and the purchaser, all you want now is the Picture."

"True, as you say, the Picture. It is all that I want. And that is striding—literally striding, I am happy, dear Miss Fleming, dear Phillis, since I may call you by your pretty Christian name. It is of my brother that I think. It is on his account that I feel unhappy."

"What is the matter with him?"

She tried very hard not to laugh, but would not trust herself to look in his face. So that he thought she was modestly guessing his secret.

"He is a great, a noble fellow, His life is made up of sacrifices and devoted to hard work. No one works so conscientiously as Cornelius. Now, at length the prospect opens up, and he will take immediately his true position among English poets."

"Indeed, I am glad of it."

"Thank you. Yet he is not happy. There is a secret sorrow in his life."

"Oh, dear!" Phillis cried impatiently, "do let me know it, and at once. Was there ever such a pair of devoted brothers?"

Humphrey was disconcerted for the moment, but went on again:

"A secret which no one has guessed but myself."

"I know what it is." She laughed and clapped her hands.

"Has he told you, Phillis? The secret of his life is that my brother Cornelius is attached to you with all the devotion of his grand poetic soul."

"Why, that was what I thought you were going to say!"

"You knew it?" Humphrey was as solemn as an eight-day clock, while Phillis's eyes danced with mirth. "And you feel the response of a passionate nature? He shall be your Petrarch. You shall read his very soul. But Cornelius brings you a virgin heart, a virgin heart, Phillis" (O Humphrey! and after what you know about Gretchen!). "May he hope that——"

"Certainly he may hope, and so may you. And now we have had quite enough of devotion and secrets and great poetic souls. Come, Mr. Humphrey."

She rose from the grass and looked him in the face, laughing. For a moment the thought crossed the Artist's brain that he had made a mess of it somehow.

"Now," she said, joining the other two, "let us have some tea, and be real."

Neither of them understood her desire to be real, and the Twins declined tea. That beverage they considered worthy only of late breakfast, and to be taken as a morning pick-me-up. So they departed, taking leave with a multitudinous smile and many tender hand-pressures. As they left the garden together arm-in-arm they straightened their backs, held up their heads, and stuck out their legs like the Knave of Spades. And they looked so exactly like a pair of triumphant cocks that Phillis almost expected them to crow.

"Au revoir," said Cornelius, taking off his hat, with a whole wreath of smiles, for a final parting at the gate.

"Sans dire adieu," said Humphrey, doing the same, with a light in his eyes which played upon his beard like sunshine.

"Phillis, my dear," said Agatha, "they really are the most wonderful pair I ever saw."

"They are so funny," said Phillis, laughing. "They sleep all day, and when they wake up they pretend to have been working. And they sit up all night. And, O Agatha! each one came to me just now, and told me he had a secret to impart to me."

"What was that, my dear?"

"That the other one adored me, and might he hope?"

"But, Phillis, this is beyond a joke. And actually here, before my very eyes!"

"I said they might both hope. Though I don't know what they are to hope. It seems to me that if those two lazy men, who never do anything but pretend to be exhausted with work, were only to hope for anything at all it might wake them up a little. And they each said that the other would bring me a virgin heart, Agatha. What did they mean?"

Agatha laughed.

"Well, my dear, it is a most uncommon thing to find in a man of fifty, and I should say, if it were true, which I don't believe, that it argued extreme insensibility. Such an offering is desirable at five-and-twenty, but very, very rare, my dear at any age. And at their time of life I should think that it was like an apple in May—kept too long, Phillis, and tasting of the straw. But then you don't understand."

Phillis thought that a virgin heart might be one of the things to be understood when the Coping-stone was achieved, and asked no more.

At the Richmond railway-station the brothers, who had not spoken a word to each other since leaving the house, turned into the refreshment-room by common consent and without consultation. They had, as usual, a brandy-and-soda, and on taking the glasses in their hands they looked at each other and smiled.

"Cornelius."

"Humphrey."

"Shall we"—the Artist dropped his voice, so that the attendant damsel might not hear—"shall we drink the health and happiness of Phillis?"

"We will, Humphrey," replied the Poet, with enthusiasm.

When they got into the train and found themselves alone in the carriage they dug each other in the ribs once, with great meaning.

"She knows," said the Poet, with a grin worthy of Mephistopheles, "that she has found a virgin heart."

"She does," said Humphrey. "O Cornelius, and the little Gretchen and the milkpails? Byronic Rover!"

"Ah, Humphrey, shall I tell her of the contadina, the black-eyed model, and the old wild days in Rome, eh? Don Giovanni!"

Then they both laughed, and then they fell asleep in the carriage, because it was long past their regular hour for the afternoon nap, and slept till the guard took their tickets at Vauxhall.