suggested a book to him which took his fancy, and in planning it
something of the old zest of life returned to him. Moreover, it was a
book which required him to spend a part of every year in Paris, and the
neighbourhood of his sister was now more delightful to him than ever.

So, after a time, he settled down contentedly in his London chambers with
his books about him, and presently found that glow of labour stealing
over him which is at once the stimulus and the reward of every true son
of knowledge. His book reconciled him to life again, and soon he was as
often seen in the common haunts of London society as before. He dined
out, he went to the theatre, he frequented his club like other men, and
every year he spent three of the winter months in Paris, living in the
best French world, talking as he never talked in London, and cultivating,
whether in the theatre or in the _salons_ of his sister's friends or in
the studios of some of the more eminent of French artists, a fastidious
critical temper, which was rapidly becoming more and more exacting, more
and more master of the man.

Now, on this May afternoon, as he settled himself down to his work, it
would have given any of those who liked Eustace Kendal--and they were
many--pleasure to see how the look of fatigue with which he had returned
from his round of the Academy faded away, how he shook back the tumbling
gray locks from his eyes with the zest and the eagerness of one setting
forth to battle, and how, as time passed on and the shadows deepened on
the white spire opposite, the contentment of successful labour showed
itself in the slow unconscious caress which fell upon the back of the
sleeping cat curled up in the chair beside him, or in the absent but
still kindly smile with which he greeted the punctual entrance of the
servant, who at five o'clock came to put tea and the evening paper beside
him and to make up the fire, which crackled on with cheery companionable