in Larcher's presence.

It was a drizzling, cheerless night. Larcher had been to a dinner in
Madison Avenue, and he thus found himself not far from Davenport's abode.
Going thither upon an impulse, he beheld the artist seated at the table,
leaning forward over a confusion of old books, some of them open. He
looked pallid in the light of the reading lamp at his elbow, and his
eyes seemed withdrawn deep into their hollows. He welcomed his visitor
with conventional politeness.

"How's this?" began Larcher. "Do I find you pondering,

'... weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore?'"

"No; merely rambling over familiar fields." Davenport held out the
topmost book.

"Oh, Shakespeare," laughed Larcher. "The Sonnets. Hello, you've marked
part of this."

"Little need to mark anything so famous. But it comes closer to me than
to most men, I fancy." And he recited slowly, without looking down at the
page:

'When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,'--