"My boy, this is worth a dozen of the other. It is the biggest thing you have done yet."
The younger men all chimed in, echoing the opinion of their senior. Graham looked incredulously from one to the other; there was no doubting their sincerity. Like many another before him, he knew not how to distinguish his successes from his failures. The old artist, who had all his life been on the eve of painting his great picture, underrated the value of the new picture, but he was not mistaken in placing The Lovers far above it. Graham looked at it for the first time in many weeks, with that impersonal criticism of his own work which is only possible to an artist when a certain period has elapsed after its creation, and the mind has been occupied with other interests.
It was late that night when the artist returned to his room, after dining with his sculptor friend at a restaurant near by. The moonlight flooded the studio, lighting its farthest corner. It showed him the vases of rose-bloom and the dark-browed Circe on the wall; it showed him the blackened hearth, where the embers still smouldered. And what was that in the fireplace? A charred wooden frame with a heap of ashes lying 'twixt its sides. Graham sprang forward with a cry of apprehension, and lifted the blistered frame. His fear had not been groundless: this bit of wood and that handful of cinders were all that remained of his great new picture! He gave a deep groan and staggered back against the wall. Before him, on the easel, gleaming through the pure silver light, was the picture of The Lovers. Millicent's dreamy face, radiant with hope and love, smiled at him from the arms of the lover who now stood, half crazed with grief, gazing at the ruin before him.
The young sculptor stood beside him, full of a sympathy he knew not how to express. At last he spoke:--
"Graham, look up, and do not grieve for what is past help. I tell you, man, that your greatest picture stands before you. The Lovers has the one quality which your work has heretofore missed. It is human, it is full of natural sentiment. It does not appeal to an aristocracy of thought, but to all men and all women, learned and untaught. I know not what influence swayed you in this picture, but I know that it lifted you to a higher plane than you had before attained. I care not for the loss of your Poet; it told me nothing of you that I did not know before; it was a step backwards to the time when you made that wondrous wicked Circe with her herd of swine. Let it go, and submit to the influence which inspired this picture, for which the world is richer to-day than for a score of such works as the other."
Graham looked at the speaker with doubting eyes. The words seemed to rouse an echo in his soul. They told him that he had served the altar of Art with Moloch sacrifices. Instead of the peaceful offerings of love, he had brought the anguish of two strong hearts to desecrate her temple. A dim perception of the truth entered his mind, and his grief for the lost picture was for a moment forgotten in a doubt which rose before him, never to be dismissed again until it was fully solved. A doubt of self, of his own judgment, of his own inflexible will.
Millicent was gone! The six straight redwoods whispered the news one to another, and shook their tall tops sadly, while the sweet south wind sighed through their branches. Millicent was gone! and the roses that clasped and clung about her lattice died on the night she left them, and the vine bloomed no more, and bore for that season nothing but leaves. Millicent was gone! She had set wide the door of the golden prison where her love-birds had lived and sung so merrily through the long summer. But the little white creatures, prison-born, prison-bred, were too timid to venture out into the roomy forest, and had clung to the only home they had ever known; and so Barbara, gentle, sweet-souled Barbara, took them into her sunny room; and cared for them as Millicent had done. For a day they were silent, and then they sang as merrily as before. There was still sunshine; and crispy groundsel and clear cool water were given them by hands as gentle, if not so fair, as those which had tended them before.
The New Year was at hand, and the châtelaine of the San Rosario Ranch had summoned a group of friends to her hospitable home to pass the holiday time. So Barbara was full of household cares, and Hal was busy with shooting and riding expeditions. Ferrara was there, just back from Alaska, with a tribute of rare furs to lay at Barbara's pretty feet. Maurice Galbraith and John Graham were missing, and that other whose absence was still keenly felt. Mr. and Mrs. Shallop, O'Neil, and Hartley were come, with a half dozen other old friends, all bound together by the magnetic influence which radiated from their hostess, in whom all their various interests were concentrated. Each was friend to other for her sake, whom they all loved. In the existence of every one of the group her pure and unselfish nature was a real factor. When faith in human nature, in one's self, is faint and wavering, then is the time when the remembrance of such a spotless life, so pure a heart, steadies the wavering belief in truth, and strengthens us to fight the good fight. By loving help and by high example, Marianne Deering had succored and befriended each of the friends who on that New Year's eve assembled about her dining table. With a face bright with that beauty of the soul which knows not the marring of time, she presided over the gay festivity. Three pretty cousins from San Francisco added their bright faces to the charming scene. The apartment and the board were garlanded with flowers. Banks of heavy ferns panelled the walls, and bunches of white, heavy-scented magnolias were outlined against their dark green. Through the open windows were seen the gay lanterns hung about the veranda, illuminating the festoons of fresh creepers, and giving glimpses of the soft velvet turf outside. The merriment was at its height as Barbara lifted the loving-cup, filled with a sweet, strong wine, and, calling out the toast, "To absent friends," set her rosy lips to the brim, and drank from the cup in which each of the joyful company was to pledge some distant dear one. It was a custom at the San Rosario Ranch which had become time-honored. The girl smiled gayly as she passed the crystal beaker to Juan Ferrara, who sat upon her right; but her eyes were dark with unshed tears, and the man sighed as he drank, omitting to repeat the toast. What were absent friends to him beside this woman who smiled in his face, but whose tears fell for one who was far from her! Round went the cup from hand to hand, and to every heart came a thrill of joy or sorrow at the thought of the absent one, toward whom it turned in this loving communion. O'Neil, sitting by his hostess, was the last to take the cup. The warm-blooded Irishman was in high spirits. The glances of the dark-eyed "girling" at his side, and the general good-fellowship of the occasion, had brought out in him the irrepressible good-humor of his nation. The ceremony of passing the loving-cup, and the invocation to absent friends, had carried something a little serious with it, which, to the jolly Irishman, was thoroughly antagonistic.
"Dear hostess," said he, placing the cup before him on the table, "I do not like the sentiment of your toast; 't is ungallant. How can I, sitting between two such lovely ladies, find time or power to salute an absent one, howsoever fair? May I give you my toast for the loving-cup? Have I your permission to sing a stave from one of my national songs on the subject?"
He was answered by a general acclamation of assent. Rising to his feet, the blond, burly giant held up the cup with its low ebb of crimson wine, and sang in a clear, strong voice the following couplet:--