Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/21

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which Clayton toiled and sacrificed, and in the simple lines he experienced the artist's ineffable felicity; he had shown how good, how noble, how true a man Clayton was. All at once he realized the sensation the cartoon would produce, how it would delight and hearten Clayton's followers, how it would please Hardy, and how it would touch Clayton. It would be a tribute to the man and the friendship, but now a tribute broken, unfinished. Kittrell gazed a moment longer, and in that moment Edith came.

"The dear, beautiful soul!" she exclaimed softly. "Neil, it is wonderful. It is not a cartoon; it is a portrait. It shows what you might do with a brush."

Kittrell could not speak, and he turned the drawing-board to the wall.

When he had gone, Edith sat and thought—of Neil, of the new position, of Clayton. He had loved Neil, and been so proud of his work; he had shown a frank, naïve pleasure in the cartoons Neil had made of him. That last time he was there, thought Edith, he had said that without Neil the "good old cause," as he called it, using Whitman's phrase, could never have triumphed in that town. And now, would he come again? Would he ever stand in that