“It is, and I was intoxicated with the wine of success for a time. But after all, I find a bitter drop in it, for there is always a higher step to take, a brighter prize to win, and one is never satisfied.”
He paused an instant with the craving yet despondent look poets and painters wear as they labor for perfection in “a divine despair;” then added, in a tone of kindly satisfaction which rung true on the sensitive ear that listened,—
“But all that nonsense pleases Helwyze, and he has so few delights, I would not rob him of one even so small as this, for I owe every thing to him, you know.”
“I do not know. May I?”
“You may; for I want you to like my friend, and now I think you only fear him.”
“Mr. Canaris, I do not dislike your friend. He has been most kind to me, I am grieved if I seem ungrateful,” murmured Gladys, with a vague trouble in her artless face, for she had no power to explain the instinctive recoil which had unconsciously betrayed itself.
“Hear what he did for me, and then it may be easier to show as well as to feel gratitude; since but for him you would have had none of these foolish rhymes to sing.”
With a look askance, a quick gesture, and a curious laugh, Canaris tossed the book into the urn below, and the heliotrope gave a fragrant sigh as it closed above the treasure given to its keeping. Gladys uttered a little cry, but her companion took no heed, for clasping his hands about his knee he looked off into the bloomy wilderness below as if he saw a younger self there, and spoke of him with a pitiful sort of interest.
“Three years ago an ambitious boy came to seek his fortune in the great city yonder. He possessed nothing but sundry accomplishments, and a handful of verses which he tried to sell. Failing in this hope after various trials, he grew desperate, and thought to end his life like poor Chatterton. No, not like Chatterton,—for this boy was not an impostor.”
“Had he no friend anywhere?” asked Gladys,—her work neglected while she listened with intensest interest to the tale so tragically begun.