clamour of a hansom, the cry of an occasional newsboy, explanatory of
the crimes and tragedies of the passing hour. Or perhaps the eyes of
Valentine were, for the moment, weary of the monotonous green walls of
his sanctum, leaning tent-wise towards the peaked apex of the ceiling,
and longed to rest on the many beautiful pictures that hung in one line
around his drawing-room. It seemed so, for now, as he sat in a chair
before the fire, holding Rip upon his knee, his blue eyes were fixed
meditatively upon a picture called "The Merciful Knight," which faced
him over the mantelpiece. This was the only picture containing a figure
of the Christ which Valentine possessed. He had no holy children, no
Madonnas. But he loved this Christ, this exquisitely imagined dead,
drooping figure, which, roused into life by an act of noble renunciation,
bent down and kissed the armed hero who had been great enough to forgive
his enemy. He loved those weary, tender lips, those faded limbs, the
sacred tenuity of the ascetic figure, the wonderful posture of benign
familiarity that was more majestic than any reserve. Yes, Valentine loved
this Christ, and Julian knew it well. Often, late at night, Julian had
leaned back lazily listening while Valentine played, improvising in a
light so dim as to be near to darkness. And Julian had noticed that the
player's eyes perpetually sought this picture, and rested on it, while
his soul, through the touch of the fingers, called to the soul of music
that slept in the piano, stirred it from sleep, carried it through
strange and flashing scenes, taught it to strive and to agonize, then
hushed it again to sleep and peace. And as Julian looked from the picture
to the player, who seemed drawing inspiration from it, he often mutely
compared the imagined beauty of the soul of the Christ with the known
beauty of the soul of his friend. And the two lovelinesses seemed to
meet, and to mingle as easily as two streams one with the other. Yet the
beauty of the Christ soul sprang from a strange parentage, was a sublime
inheritance, had been tried in the fiercest fires of pity and of pain.