Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/144

136 were fixed upon the picture. He was thinking about the allegory.

Helen drew her hand back in shame.

"Of course he can't say more," she thought, "while I am alone and so far away from home."

Her hero-worship deepened in fervour.

"If it had not been for you, Miss Wistar," her master was saying, "I should not have had the courage to go on. You make a man believe in himself. But look here," he added rudely, "we haven't thought about Miss Bradford's old sailor. Where is he?"

Patient search revealed the picture in the corner.

"It's a beastly shame," said Howard Stanton fiercely. "They've hung no end of trash in better places."

As they turned to go a plump old gentleman crowded past them, panting in his efforts to reach the centre. He caught sight of the symbolic picture, and examined the catalogue in wonder. Then he put a glass to one eye, and gazed.