“Hush!” cried Trethowen. “Don’t speak so loud. We may be overheard.”
Heedless of the warning, the artist continued—
“Does it not seem absurd that a man’s whole life and ambition should be overthrown by a mere passion for a woman?” he said bitterly. “Yet this has been my case. You remember that soon after we first became acquainted I went to study in Paris—but there, perhaps Bérard has told you?”
“No; I wish to hear the true facts,” replied Hugh. “Tell me all.”
“Ah! the story is not an enticing one to relate,” the artist resumed, with a subdued, feverish agitation. “There were three of us—Holt, Glanville, and myself—and in the Quartier Latin we led a reckless existence, with feast and jubilee one day, and starvation the next. We were a free-and-easy trio in our atelier on the Quai Montabello, happy in to-day and heedless of to-morrow, caring nothing for those bonds of conventionality which degrade men into money-grubs. I had freedom, liberty, happiness, until one night at a bal masque at the Bullier I met a woman. Ah, I see you are smiling already. Well, smile on. I would laugh were it not that I feel the pain.”
There was an intense bitterness in his tone, which showed how very keenly he felt.
“Nay,” interrupted Hugh coolly, “you mistake the meaning of my smile.”
“No matter; you have every reason to smile, for it was contemptible weakness, and that weakness was mine. I had seen many women whom the world called beauties, and I could look upon them with indifference. At last—”
He paused; a lump rose in his throat, and his hands were clasped behind him convulsively.
“At last,” he went on, with a fierce passion—“at last I saw her—our eyes met. It was no fancy, no boyish imagination—it was reality. I stood before her, dumb, trembling, spellbound. I could not speak, I could not move, the power of life seemed to have gone from me.”