I had won my mistress, but my mind misgave me that I had lost my friend. Not from any signs of disappointment on his part, or any token that the world outside us could have recognised. Even to myself, who had known his innermost soul for years, there were times when I could cheat myself into the belief that all was well between us. But, just as there are times and seasons when Nature’s face and influence seem out of harmony with our mental and physical being, even so, and quite as surely, it was borne in upon me that his love for me was gone.

He had taken the news of my engagement well—too well, or so it seemed to me.

Perhaps the greatest charm of our friendship in the good old days had been the thought that I, alone of all his friends, had gained admission to his innermost heart. By all the rest of the world his easy-going air of calm indifference had been accepted for the reality. I alone knew what deep intensities of passion burned beneath that calm exterior.

And this, I take it, is the very highest crown and glory of a love—to feel that you alone have gained admission where no one else may tread.

Now, something, an indefinite something, had come between us. To all but me the change was impalpable; only, if possible, an added charm and courtesy in his relations with Marion and me. Nothing, I think, that she herself could realise or detect, for his manner towards her had always held in it a studied gentleness; only the gentleness was accentuated now.

But between him and me the veil had fallen. To those who did not know him, it would seem strange, no doubt, that Eric had not long ago declared his love. That he had never done so, I knew from Marion herself. Most affectionate, she said, most devoted he had been; but never a word that bordered upon love. At the last she had begun to doubt whether it really existed at all, especially when his letters that reached her were so few and silent on the subject.

But I, who knew him better than she did, saw in this very self-restraint and reticence concerning his feelings only an additional indication of their strength. His, I knew, was a singularly proud temperament, that would never have ventured to risk the final issue till he had well assured himself that failure was impossible. And for this assurance he had been waiting—waiting through all his studentship at Rome, rarely writing and never allowing an intimation of it to betray him in his letters. Simply waiting, till the artist-fire within him should have realised itself in action, and then offering his first great picture, together with the gift of his love, at Marion’s feet.

And then, just when he had realised his heart’s desire of fame, and saw the world’s honours placed within his grasp, he had come home only to find that he had been forestalled by me, and that he had lost beyond recall the greater prize of Marion’s love. Truly a test that might imperil even the friendship of a life.

I would have given much to prevent him, had it been possible, from hearing Marion’s last words on the chapel tower. Not that I could blame myself in any wise. I had acted loyally to him throughout, and should have continued to do so, had not Fate on a sudden taken the arbitrament into her own hands, and left me no faintest loophole for deciding otherwise than I did. But considering that I had satisfied my conscience, I felt strangely disquieted by the result. Of the reticence I had imposed on myself through long months, and of my determination to await his return for the decision of the issue, he could know nothing. And if he had gained the faintest suspicion that I knew of his love, my action, I felt sure, must wear the appearance of one who had been deliberately working to supplant his friend; worse still, had precipitated the issue so soon as the rumour was forthcoming of his probable return. Worse, too, than all was the possibility that he had heard nothing of my residence at Fleetwater or my growing love for Marion. All this, though wholly unavoidable, as I neither knew nor could discover his address, must needs in his eye seem the very silence of premeditation, which had been waiting to make the disclosure till the result should be irremediable.

But if he had indeed heard our conversation, of which I could feel no doubt, he never by a word alluded to it. With the warmth with which we had parted, with the same he met me again. “He was glad,” he said, “that his two best friends were to be drawn closer to him still,” and, laughing in his old frank way, had added that “we two had not been long in discovering the affinity between us.” This faintest gleam of satire was the only intimation he allowed himself of the feeling that lay buried in his heart.

Eric had hurried his departure from Rome, because the summer heat had set in earlier than usual that year, and because the work still left for him to do could be done equally well at home as abroad. Then he entered with spirit into the history of his travels. And how it was the Museum at Madrid, and the work of Velasquez in particular, that had fired his imagination and stimulated his activity to try and do likewise.

“You should just see his pictures,” he said, “and what that man can do. Why, his horses and riders come galloping to you out of the canvas! Even that scoundrel Philip II., perhaps the worst and basest coward that ever lived in history, gains something of distinction and nobility by the touch of his pencil. And he can paint you an atmosphere and distance in which a man can breathe and walk. And what does he do it all with? No flaming, gorgeous colours like Titian’s and Tintoret’s, but all in quiet greens and greys and browns that would be dull as ditchwater in any other hand. Opinions, I know, differ, but to me at any rate he has always seemed the greatest of Art’s great Trinity—Titian, Rembrandt, and himself. And to him I owe everything. He it was who read me the lesson that I have tried to learn—to decide what I wanted to paint, and then go straight for it, letting all the accessories and inessentials come in at the end where they can.”

Yes; it was another and a different Eric who was talking to us now from the one with whom I had parted nearly two years ago. The indolent dreamer of those days had been transfigured into the man with a purpose. And I hoped, as I heard him, that he had made a mistress of his art, and might find in his devotion to her the happiness which we are told she always gives to those who worship her with a whole and undivided purpose.

Three days later he left us, to finish, he told us, the first great picture he had attempted. It was already too late for the Academy, but competent judges thought so highly of its merits that he intended to risk its first appearance in the almost fiercer light of a London show-room. “Of course,” he added, “you two must be the first to see it.”