Thus might a devout Russian have greeted a lost icon, and worshipped, silently, a re-found saint. Larry, equally absorbed, as any painter will understand, in the contemplation of his work, took no heed of its effect upon Barty.
"By Jove!" he murmured, drawing a big breath, "I wonder if I did it! I don't feel as if I had--something outside me--" He stopped; he felt as if Christian herself were there; he felt as if her arms were round him, his head upon her bosom. He was giddy with emotion. Scarcely knowing what he did he walked across the room, and stared out of the window, looking across his own woods to the woods of Mount Music.
That morning he had said good-bye to her for three long days. She had met him at the old stepping stones across the Ownashee, and she had made him renew his promise of silence until her return; he was sorry he couldn't tell old Barty; but no matter, nothing mattered, except the marvel that she was his. He whispered adoration to her, breathing her name again and again, crowning it, as with a wreath, with those old, familiar adjectives that had so lately become intense with new meaning for him; he forgot Barty, forgot even her portrait, as he thought of herself.
Barty came over to him; the two young men, with their common secret, suspected by neither, a secret that for one was a living ecstasy, and for the other an impossible ideal, stood silent, full of their own thoughts. Barty spoke first.
"It's a wonder to me! I didn't think you could paint like that, Larry! I didn't think anyone could!"
"Well, no more I can, really. This was a sort of a miracle and it painted itself."
The same impulse moved them both, and they returned to the easel on which was the picture, but with a quick movement Larry flung the drapery over the frame again and hid the picture.
"Didn't you say you had a message for me from your father?"
Barty accepted the change of subject with his accustomed resignation to Larry's moods.
"I have. He said he'd be at home to-morrow afternoon--that's Sunday--and he wanted to see you on very special business."
"Do you know what about?" Larry asked, without interest, while he arranged the many-coloured silken drapery in effective folds over the picture.