Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/230

222 being the only member—he had never heard of another—where it was vaguely understood that letters would some day or other find him. Fortunately it was not necessary to worry about him, so comfortably his whole aspect seemed to imply that he could never be ill. And this was not perhaps because his bloom was healthy, but because it was morbid, as if he had been universally inoculated.

He turned up in Rosedale Road one day after Miriam had left London; he had just come back from a fortnight in Brittany, where he had drawn unusual refreshment from the subtle sadness of the landscape. He was on his way somewhere else; he was going abroad for the autumn, but he was not particular what he did, professing that he had returned to London on purpose to take one last superintending look at Nick. "It's very nice, it's very nice; yes, yes, I see," he remarked, giving a little general assenting sigh as his eyes wandered over the simple scene—a sigh which, to a suspicious ear, would have testified to an insidious reaction.

Nick's ear, as we know, was already suspicious; a fact which would sufficiently account for the expectant smile (it indicated the pleasant apprehension of a theory confirmed) with which he inquired: "Do you mean my pictures are nice?"

"Yes, yes, your pictures and the whole thing."

"The whole thing?"

"Your existence here, in this little remote independent corner of the great city. The disinterestedness of your attitude, the persistence of your effort, the piety, the beauty, in short the example, of the whole spectacle."

Nick broke into a laugh. "How near to having had