Laurie gazed and applauded as was expected of him; but somehow, though he had been moderately cheerful before, the sight of this life which was no life filled him suddenly with an uncalled-for depression. To go wild about a scrap of paper with some pencilled lines made how many hundred years ago, and never to think of the lives getting wrecked, the hearts getting broken round you! This was what Laurie suddenly thought,--with great injustice, as was natural,--and felt disposed to walk away again on the spot without betraying the troubles of which the other was unconscious. ‘The padrona would have known before I had said a word,’ he said to himself in his heart.
Whether Mr. Welby, whose eye was keen enough, whatever his sympathy might be, read his young friend’s thoughts at once it would be impossible to tell. If he did he showed no feeling for them. He went on calmly to the end of his new acquisitions, pointing out their beauties; and then when Laurie was sick and faint, and felt that he hated Titian, put them all together in a most leisurely way and locked them up in a drawer of a beautiful ebony cabinet all inlaid with silver. Then he returned to his visitor and drew a chair to a table and pointed to one near him. ‘Come and tell me all about it,’ he said with the most sudden change in his tone.
‘Ah, you have heard!’ cried Laurie, half indignant, half mollified.
‘I have heard nothing,’ said the painter; ‘but I see you have brought a heap of troubles to cast down at your neighbour’s door. Come, let us have them out.’ Whereupon poor Laurie told his story, brightening as he told it. Curiously enough, when he brought himself face to face with his misfortunes, the burden of them always was lightened for him,--a case so much unlike what it is with ordinary men. When he stood at a distance from them, so to speak, they swelled into great mystic, devouring giants; but they were only manageable human difficulties, and no more, when he faced them near. ‘I must take to work in earnest,’ said Laurie, ‘that’s all, so far as I am concerned. It is worse for Ben; but fortunately, as I have a profession----’
‘Have you a profession?’ Mr. Welby broke in abruptly, looking Laurie, without a shadow of a smile, in the face, as if moved by genuine curiosity; and the young man gave a little nervous smile.