He had known White for years, and been his staunchest helper and benefactor. Poor White, the best and kindliest fellow in the world, had neither the art of making money nor the knack of keeping it when it came; so that he was generally neck deep in difficulties, and would have sunk often in the quagmire of bankruptcy had no helping hand been near. As a painter he was not a genius; yet Forster bought his pictures, very often commissioning and paying for them long before they had taken shape on the easel. So that the gentle Bohemian had been heard more than once to exclaim that, in the course of his long heavenward pilgrimage, he had encountered only one guardian angel, and that angel was James Forster.
The day after the interview described in a recent chapter, White and Forster sat alone dining at a quiet table in the Junior Athenæum Club, of which the merchant was a member.
‘I am glad she has told you,’ said Forster quietly. ‘Yes, I have asked her to become my wife.’
White did not speak for some minutes, and his expression was very sad and scared.
‘I am very sorry,’ he murmured at last. ‘I can’t tell how sorry I am. I—I don’t know what to say, upon my soul. It is such an honour—such a surprise too—and you, God knows you are the best man in the world. But it can’t be. You had it from her own lips. She will never marry.’
White’s eyes were full of tears, and he gulped down a glass of wine in extreme emotion.
‘After all,’ he added eagerly, not meeting the other’s eyes, ‘she’s only a poor girl, and it wouldn’t be right for a man in your position to marry an actress.’
‘I never loved a woman before,’ returned the merchant, ‘and I know I shall never love again. My first marriage was not altogether a happy one, and I was driven more than led into it; but, thank God, I did my duty, and I have my boy. But I’m a lonely man—you don’t know how lonely, and I thought—I thought this might have been.’
‘I wish to God it could, I do with all my soul.’
‘I am sure of that.’