men care all for fame and little for art.
For five years the two had been constantly together, save for some months when Jasper Trenoweth would be travelling in Italy, or Switzerland, or Norway. It was after returning from one of these tours that one evening Jasper Trenoweth took his way down the hillside to the studios.
The general room where the artists usually sat and smoked and drank coffee in the evenings, was bright with lamplight and firelight as he opened the door, and stood for a moment on the threshold looking at the group round the fireplace.
They sprang up at his advent to give him a warm welcome. Brushes had been laid aside, easels forsaken. On the morrow the pictures destined for acceptance or rejection at the Royal Academy would be on view to the village folk, or gentry around. Hard work was over for a time. It remained to be seen what its results would produce.
"Welcome, welcome. Just in time!" rang out cheerily as the well-known face looked back at them.
"I suppose you've come to see what we've been doing," said Denis O'Hara, shaking him warmly by the hand. "You couldn't have hit on a better time, only—" he stopped and glanced round at his companions, a momentary chill and embarrassment on his bright face, and in his usually gay young voice.
"Only—what?" said Jasper Trenoweth, his deep tones sounding less stern than usual as he glanced round at the familiar scene.
A small table stood by the fire-place. It was littered over with sketches, and it seemed to him that the eyes of these "Brothers of the Brush" had suddenly turned to that table, and its loosely scattered contents.
Denis O'Hara seemed to constitute himself spokesman. "Sit down," he said, "and I'll tell you in what schoolboy fashion we were going to amuse ourselves. You see those sketches, . . . we found them in that cupboard yonder, and after some valuable and impartial criticism—which you've missed—we agreed to relate each a story of the origin or subject of one particular sketch, to be selected by vote."
"A good idea and interesting, if you tell the truth," said Jasper Trenoweth. "You must not let my visit interfere with your proposed amusement."
"Who did that?"
He came forward and stood by the little table, looking down with grave unsmiling eyes at the scattered suggestions before him. Idly enough his hand turned over the various sheets. The three men resumed their chairs and pipes. They were used to his visits and his ways, and accepted them without remark. Denis O'Hara alone of the group watched the face that was bent over the sketches, watched it with that sense of interest and speculation that it had always aroused in his breast. It was usually so calm and impressive a face that he was startled to see it suddenly flush darkly, hotly to the very brow, as the hand so idly moving among the scattered sheets turned up one and seemed arrested by that one.
A quiver as of pain, or the memory of pain, disturbed the usually impassive features. Jasper Trenoweth's eyes flashed keen and startled on the young and earnest face so intently watching him.
"Who—who did that?" he asked hoarsely.
