unconcernedly, sharply observant, every detail of the pretty interior
registering itself on his brain. His eyes were wide apart; nothing in
their field of vision escaped; and as they drank in the beauty before
them the fighting light died out and a warm glow took its place. He was
responsive to beauty, and here was cause to respond.

An oil painting caught and held him. A heavy surf thundered and burst
over an outjutting rock; lowering storm-clouds covered the sky; and,
outside the line of surf, a pilot-schooner, close-hauled, heeled over
till every detail of her deck was visible, was surging along against a
stormy sunset sky. There was beauty, and it drew him irresistibly. He
forgot his awkward walk and came closer to the painting, very close. The
beauty faded out of the canvas. His face expressed his bepuzzlement. He
stared at what seemed a careless daub of paint, then stepped away.
Immediately all the beauty flashed back into the canvas. "A trick
picture," was his thought, as he dismissed it, though in the midst of the
multitudinous impressions he was receiving he found time to feel a prod
of indignation that so much beauty should be sacrificed to make a trick.
He did not know painting. He had been brought up on chromos and
lithographs that were always definite and sharp, near or far. He had
seen oil paintings, it was true, in the show windows of shops, but the
glass of the windows had prevented his eager eyes from approaching too
near.

He glanced around at his friend reading the letter and saw the books on
the table. Into his eyes leaped a wistfulness and a yearning as promptly
as the yearning leaps into the eyes of a starving man at sight of food.
An impulsive stride, with one lurch to right and left of the shoulders,
brought him to the table, where he began affectionately handling the
books. He glanced at the titles and the authors' names, read fragments