"I was standing," Maitland said, "before a masterpiece of sea and rock, such as only Richards can paint.It was a view of Land's End, Cornwall, and in the artist's very best vein.My admiration made me totally unmindful of my surroundings, so much so, indeed, that, although the gallery was crowded, I caught myself expressing my delight in a perfectly audible undertone.My enthusiasm, since it was addressed to no one, soon began to attract attention, and people stopped looking at the pictures to look at me.I was conscious of this in a vague, far-off way, much as one is conscious of a conversation which seems to have followed him across the borderland of sleep, and I even thought that I ought to be embarrassed.How long I remained thus transported I do not know.The first thing Iremember is hearing someone close beside me take a quick, deep breath, one of those full inhalations natural to all sensitive natures when they come suddenly upon something sublime.-I turned and looked.I have said I was transported by that canvas of sea and rocks, and have, therefore, no word left to describe the emotion with which I gazed upon the exquisite, living, palpitating picture beside me.A composite photograph of all the Madonnas ever painted, from the Sistine to Bodenhausen's, could not have been more lovely, more ineffably womanly than that young girl, radiant with the divine glow of artistic delight - at least, that is my opinion, which, by the bye, I should, perhaps, have stated a little more gingerly, inasmuch as you are yourself acquainted with the young lady.Now, don't look incredulous [noticing my surprise].Black hair - not brown, black; clear pink and white complexion; large, deep violet eyes with a remarkable poise to them." - Here I continued the description for him: "Slight of figure; a full, honest waist, without a suggestion of that execrable death-trap, Dame Fashion's hideous cuirass; a little above middle height; deliberate, and therefore graceful, in all her movements; carries herself in a way to impress one with the idea that she is innocent, without that time-honoured concomitant, ignorance; half girl, half woman; shy, yet strong; and in a word, very beautiful - that's Gwen Darrow."I paused here, and Maitland went on somewhat dubiously: "Yes, it's not hard to locate such a woman.She makes her presence as clearly felt among a million of her sex as does a grain of fuchsine in a hogshead of water.If, with a few ounces of this, Tyndall could colour Lake Geneva, so with Gwen Darrow one might, such is the power of the ideal, change the ethical status of a continent."He then told me how he had made a study of Miss Darrow's movements, and had met her many times since; in fact, so often that he fancied, from something in her manner, that she had begun to wonder if his frequent appearance were not something more than a coincidence.The fear that she might think him dogging her footsteps worried him, and he began as sedulously to avoid the places he knew she frequented, as he previously had sought them.This, he confessed, made him utterly miserable.He had, to be sure, never spoken to her, but it was everything to be able to see her.When he could endure it no longer he had come to me under pretence of feeling ill, that he might, when he had made my acquaintance, get me to introduce him to the Darrows.
You will understand, of course, that I did not learn all this at our first interview.Maitland did not take me into his confidence until we had had a conference at his laboratory devoted entirely to scientific speculations.On this occasion he surprised me not a little by turning to me suddenly and saying: "Some of the grandest sacrifices the world has ever known, if one may judge by the fortitude they require,=20and the pain they cause, have occurred in the laboratory." I looked at him inquiringly, and he continued:
"When a man, simply for the great love of truth that is in him, has given his life to the solution of some problem, and has at last arrived, after years of closest application, at some magnificent generalisation - when he has, perhaps, published his conclusions, and received the grateful homage of all lovers of truth, his life has, indeed, borne fruit.Of him may it then be justly said that his "'...life hath blossomed downward like The purple bell-flower.'
