His friends called Radnor Hunt a cynic. He laughed lightly when accused of being cold and unresponsive, and declared that he must have imbibed the trait unconsciously from the nature of his work, for winter landscapes were his specialty. But now and then when he was alone, in the little studio over the stable in Fifty Fifth Street, where he worked by day and slept by night, he would look at himself in the mirror over his dressing case and—laugh again, such a hard, bitter laugh, that sometimes he shuddered on hearing it, and glanced fearfully around him as if dreading to see the author of the sound. “I, a cynic, a woman hater!” he would mutter, putting his hand above his eyebrows and leaning forward to peer more closely at himself in the glass. “Bah! how blind the world is! Who would believe from _this_ what rages _here_?” And with a quick motion he would sweep his hand across his face and place it for an instant over his heart. Then, as if in utter disgust with himself, he would hastily turn out the light, fling himself on his bed, just as he was, and sleep thus till morning. And yet Radnor Hunt was reckoned a moderately fortunate young man. He had come to New York knowing no one, and now, after a two years’ residence, he had had a picture in the Water Color which brought him orders for three others, while half a dozen periodicals were always ready to pay well for his “pot boilers,” the pen and ink work which Radnor despised. He was an only child. His father had been a country doctor in a Connecticut town, who, contrary to the usual rule, had been proud of his son’s artistic tastes and had encouraged him in them. This, instead of being grateful for it, Radnor frequently recalled with bitter regret. “If he had only laughed at my first attempt, taken my paints away from me and put me to some business,” he would sigh. “Then perhaps——” But here he usually broke off his reflections, while a strange light would come into his eyes. It was in this mood that he frequently sprang up from his work to jam his hat fiercely over his brows and go out to take a long walk that was utterly aimless. Mr. and Mrs. Hunt had both died within a few months of one another the winter before Radnor left home. He was twenty three then, and that summer he had passed with his cousin, Mrs. Stilton Barnes, in the Adirondacks. Mrs. Stilton Barnes was a Philadelphian who lived south of Market Street and who had at once conceived a great fondness for the handsome young relative whom she met for the first time in thirteen years at his mother’s funeral. Radnor well remembered having worshiped her at a respectful distance when he was a small boy. She was then a happy hearted girl just leaving her teens behind her, and with her head too full of lovers, one of whom might turn out to be a husband, to pay much attention to the little fellow in knickerbockers whom she often caught looking at her with unveiled admiration in his great blue eyes.