While he had been talking with the
convict, the girl and Myra Willard had started on their way back to
Fairlands.
With a peculiar smile upon his heavy features, the man slipped the glass
into its case, and, with a long, slow look over the scene, set out on his
way to rejoin his friends.
Chapter XXVI
I Want You Just as You Are
The evening of that day after their return from the mountains, when Conrad
Lagrange had found Aaron King so absorbed in his mother's letters, the
artist continued in his silent, preoccupied, mood. The next morning, it
was the same. Refusing every attempt of his friend to engage him in
conversation, he answered only with absent-minded mono-syllables; until
the novelist, declaring that the painter was fit company for neither beast
nor man, left him alone; and went off somewhere with Czar.
The artist spent the greater part of the forenoon in his studio, doing
nothing of importance. That is, to a casual observer he would have
_seemed_ to be doing nothing of importance. He did, however, place his
picture of the spring glade beside the portrait of Mrs. Taine, and then,
for an hour or more, sat considering the two paintings. Then he turned the
"Quaker Maid" again to the wall and fixed a fresh canvas in place on the
easel.
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