"So Sir Charles called on you and told you about Chrysos? Isn't Sir Charles the most darling man you ever knew? _I_ never knew such a man. There is not one atom of anything small or unworthy in his character. And I tell you very frankly that, thinking about him at times, I am amazed at myself for not falling in love with him. [Illustration: Strelsa Leeds.] "Which is proof sufficient that if I couldn't care for him I cannot ever care for any man. Don't you think so? "Now all this letter has been devoted to matters concerning myself and not one line to you and the exciting success you and Lord Dankmere are making of your new business. "Oh, Rix, I am not indifferent; all the time I have been writing to you, that has been surging and laughing in my heart--like some delicious aria that charmingly occupies your mind while you go happily about other matters--happy because the ceaseless melody that enchants you makes you so. "I have read your letter so many times, over and over; and always the same thrill of excitement begins when I come to the part where you begin to suspect that under the daubed surface of that canvas there may be something worth while. "Is it really and truly a Van Dyck? Is there any chance that it is not? Is it possible that all these years none of Dankmere's people suspected what was hidden under the aged paint and varnish of that tiresome old British landscape? "And it remained for you to suspect it!--for _you_ to discover it? Oh, Rix, I am proud of you! "And how perfectly wonderful it is that now you know its history, when it was supposed to have disappeared, where it has remained ever since under its ignoble integument of foolish paint. "No, I promise not to say one word about it until I have your permission. I understand quite well why you desire to keep the matter from the newspapers for the present. But--won't it make you and Lord Dankmere rich? Tell me--please tell me. I don't want money for myself any more, but I do want it for you. You need it; you can do so much with it, use it so intelligently, so gloriously, make the world better with it,--make it more beautiful, and people happier. "What a chasm, Rix, between what we were a year ago, and what we care to be--what we are trying to be to-day! Sometimes I think of it, not unhappily, merely wondering. "Toward what goal were we moving a year ago? What was there to be of such lives?--what at the end? Why, there was, for us, no more significance in living than there is to any overfed animal!--not as much! "Oh, this glorious country of high clouds and far horizons!--and alas! for the Streets of Ascalon where such as I once was go to and fro--'clad delicately in scarlet and ornaments of gold.'