"I never said so, Carl," said Leslie Dane, smiling.
"I know—but actions speak louder than words. You avoid them, you decline invitations where you are likely to meet them, and the handsome models vote you a perfect bear."
"Because there is but one woman in the whole world to me," answered Leslie Dane, and he paused a moment in his painting, and looked away with a world of tenderness in his large, dark eyes.
Carl Muller began to look interested.
"Ah! now I see why you work so hard," he said. "There is a woman at the bottom of it. There is always a woman at the bottom of everything that goes on in this world whether it be good or evil."
"Yes, I suppose so," said Leslie, resuming his work with a sigh to the memory of the absent girl he loved.
"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
For love is heaven, and heaven is love,"
hummed Carl in his rich tenor voice.
"Leslie, you will accompany me to the fete to-night?" said he, presently.
"Thank you. I do not care to go," said Leslie.