The only companions, he reflected, that he had taken with him on this journey were his etchings, kinder to him, more intimate with him, rewarding him with more affection than any human being. His seven etchings--the seven of his forty--Lepère's "Route de St. Gilles," Legros's "Cabane dans les Marais," Rembrandt's "Flight into Egypt," Muirhead Bone's "Orvieto," Whistler's "Drury Lane," Strang's "Portrait of Himself Etching," and Meryon's "Rue des Chantres." His seven etchings.--his greatest friends in the world, save of course Hetty and Jane his sisters. Yes he reflected, you can judge a man by his friends, and in my cowardice I have given all my heart to these things because they can't answer me back, cannot fail me when I most eagerly expect something of them, are always there when I call them, do not change nor betray me. And yet it is not only cowardice. They are intimate and individual as is no other form of graphic art. They are so personal that every separate impression has a fresh character. They are so lovely in soul that they never age nor have their moods. My Aldegrevers and Penczs, he was reflecting. . . . He was a little happier now. . . . The Browning and _To Paradise_ fell once more to the ground. I hope the old man does not waken, he thought, and yet perhaps he will pass his station. What a temper he will be in if he does that, and then I too shall suffer! He read a line or two of the Browning: Ours is a great wild country; If you climb to our castle's top, I don't see where your eye can stop . . . How strange that the book should have opened again at that same place as though it were that it wished him to read! And then _To Paradise_ a line or two, now page 376, "And the Silver Button? Would his answer defy that too? Had he some secret magic? Was he stronger than God Himself? . . ."