Audouin was vexed at the interruption, partly because he was just in the middle of one of his fluent, high-flown, transcendental periods, but still more because it came from that wretched interloper of a young English sculptor. He was just about to go on with a marked tone of continuity, when Gwen prevented him by taking up Hiram's unfinished picture. 'Why, this is beautiful!' she cried, with genuine enthusiasm. 'This is even better than the Alexandria Bay drawing, Mr. Winthrop: I like it immensely. What a lovely tint of purple on the crests of the little wavelets! and how beautifully you've done the steep sides of the old crater. Why, I do believe you ought to be a landscape painter, instead of going in for those dreadful historical pictures that nobody cares about. What a pity you've gone into Mr. Seguin's studio! I'm sure you'd do a thousand times better at this sort of subject.'
'We've considered very carefully the best place in which to develop my friend Winthrop's unusual powers,' Audouin answered in a cold tone; 'and we've both quite come to the conclusion that there's no teacher better for him anywhere than Seguin. Seguin's a really marvellous colourist, Miss Russell, and his mastery of all the technical resources of art is something that has never yet been approached, far less equalled, in the whole history of painting.'
Hiram looked up very shyly into Gwen's face, and said quite simply, 'I'm so glad you like it, Miss Russell. Your appreciation is worth a great deal to me.'
'More compliments!' Gwen thought to herself, smiling. 'They're all at it this afternoon. What on earth can be the meaning of it? My new poplin must be really awfully fetching.' But her smile was a kindly one, and poor Hiram, who hadn't much to treasure up in his soul, treasured it up sedulously for months to come among his dearest and most precious possessions.
In the end, as it happened, Audouin never got the chance of speaking alone with Gwen during the whole picnic. It was very annoying, certainly, for he had planned the little entertainment entirely for that very purpose; but really, as he reflected to himself at leisure in his own room that evening, it was after all only a postponement. 'In any case,' he thought, 'I wouldn't have insulted her by proposing to her to-day; for it is insulting to a woman to ask her for her hand until you can see quite clearly that she really cares for you. A human soul isn't a thing of so light value that you can beg for the gift of it into your safe keeping on a shorter acquaintance than would warrant you in asking for the slightest favour. A woman's heart, a true and beautiful woman's heart, is a dainty musical instrument to be carefully learnt before one can play upon it rightly. To take it up by force, as it were, and to say at a venture, “Let me see whether perchance I can get a tune out of this anyhow,” is to treat it with far less tenderness and ceremony than one would bestow upon an unconscious Stradivarius. So perhaps it was wisely ordained by the great blind Caprice which rules this universe of ours that she and I should not speak alone and face to face together to-day at Albano.'
But Hiram lulled himself to sleep by thinking over and over again to himself that night, 'She smiled at me, and she admired my drawing.'
CHAPTER XXV. MINNA BETTERS HERSELF.
Away over in London, the winter had passed far less happily for poor little Minna than it had passed at Rome for Colin Churchill. While he had been writing home enthusiastically of the blue skies and invigorating air of that delicious Italy, the fogs in London had been settling down with even more than their customary persistency over the great grey gloomy winter city. While he had been filled with the large-hearted generosity of that noble fellow Maragliano—'May I not be proud, Minna,' he wrote, 'to have known such a man, to have heard his soft Genoese accents, to have watched his wonderful chisel at its work, to have listened to his glorious sentiments on art?'—she, poor girl, had found prim, precise, old-maidish Miss Woollacott harder to endure and more pernicketty to live with than ever. Now that Colin was gone, she had nobody to sympathise with her; nobody to whose ear she might confide those thousand petty daily personal annoyances which are to women (with all sympathetic reverence be it written) far more serious hindrances to the pursuit of happiness than the greatest misfortunes that can possibly overtake them. Worst of all, Colin, she was afraid, didn't even seem to miss her. She was so miserable in London without him; so full of grief and loneliness at his absence; while he was apparently enjoying himself in Rome quite as much without her as if she had been all the time within ten minutes' walk of his attic lodging. How perfectly happy he seemed to be in his intercourse with this Signor Maragliano that he wrote to her about! How he revelled in the nymphs, and the Apollos, and the Niobes! How his letters positively overflowed with life and enthusiasm! She was glad of it, of course, very glad of it. It was so nice to think that dear Colin should at last be mingling in the free artistic life for which she knew he was so well fitted: should be moving about among those splendid Greek and Roman things he was so very fond of. But still... well, Minna did wish that there was just a little more trace in his letters of his being sorry to be so very, very far away from her.