“Why, Arthur, what is it?”
“Do you remember what Diana said?” replied the painter. “She said, ‘I am sure that that silly shepherd will not sleep there forever. Never fear, he will wake up. Diana never looks or loves for nothing.’”
Lawrence Newt gazed at him without speaking.
“Come,” said Arthur, with a feeble effort at fun, “you have correspondence all over the world. What is the news from Latmos? Has the silly shepherd waked up?”
“My dear Arthur,” said Mr. Newt, gravely, “I told you long ago that he was dead to all that heavenly splendor.”
The two men gazed steadfastly at each other without speaking. At length Arthur said, in a low voice,
“Dead?”
“Dead.”
As Lawrence Newt spoke the word the air far off and near seemed to him to ring again with that pervasive murmur, sad, soft, infinitely tender, “Good-by, Mr. Newt, good-by!”
But his eye was calm and his face cheerful.