“Hers is the only one from which one can look at it,” he answered gravely. When she bade him good-bye some ten minutes later, she did not withdraw the hand which he held. Her forget-me-not eyes grew pleading, and her voice trembled a little. “I wish I could comfort you, Jimmie--not only now, but in the lonely years to come. But remember, dear, there is nothing on earth I would n't give you or do for you--nothing on earth.” It was not till long afterwards that he fully comprehended the meaning of her words; and then she herself prettily vouchsafed the interpretation. For immediate answer he kissed her on the cheek in the brotherly fashion in which he had kissed her twice before. “What greater comfort,” said he, “can I have than to hear you say that? I am a truly enviable man, Connie. Love and affection are showered upon me in full measure. Life is very, very sweet.” The next two or three weeks brought pleasant surprises which strengthened his conviction. One by one old friends sought him out, and, some heartily, others shamefacedly, extended to him the hand of brotherhood. His evening at the Langham Sketch Club had inaugurated the new order of things. The Frewen-Smiths, whose New Year party had marked the epoch between child and woman in Aline's life, invited the two outcasts to dinner, and pointedly signified that they were the honoured guests. Brother artists looked in casually on Sunday evenings. Their wives called upon Aline, offering congratulations and wedding-gifts. A lady whose portrait he had painted, and at whose house he had visited, commissioned him to paint the portraits of her two children. The ostracism had been removed. How this had been effected Jimmie could not conjecture; and Tony Merewether and Connie Deering, who were the persons primarily and independently responsible, did not enlighten him. By Aline's wedding-day all the old circle had gathered round him, and a whisper of the true story had been heard in Wiltshire House. Thus the world began to smile upon him, as if to make amends for the anguish it could not remedy. He took the smile as a proof of the world's essential goodness. The great glory that for a day had made his life a blaze of splendour had faded; the sun in his heaven had been eternally eclipsed. But the lesser glory of the moon and stars remained undimmed; the tenderness of twilight lost no tone of its beauty. He stood unshaken in his faith, unchanged in himself--the strong, wise man looking upon the earth and the fulness thereof with the unclouded eyes of a child.