It was not too much to say that we longed
to renew our experience, to pass not hours but days in that charmed and
charming abode, refined by everything that was old-world and artistic;
and to number our hostess amongst those friends whom time and chance,
silence and distance, riches or poverty, life or death, can never
change.
We re-entered Morlaix with the shadows of night. Despising the omnibus,
we went down Jacob's Ladder, rejoicing and revelling in all the
old-world atmosphere about us, and on our way passed our Antiquarian. He
was still at his doorway, evidently watching for our arrival, and might
have been motionless as a wooden sentry ever since we had left him in
the morning.
The workshop was lighted up, and the old cabinets and the modern
wood-carving looked picturesque and beautiful in the lights and shadows
thrown by the lamps. The son, handsome as an Adonis, was bending over
some delicate carving that he was chiseling, flushed with the success of
his work, yet outwardly strangely quiet and gentle. The cherub we had
seen a morning or two ago at the doorstep ought now to have been in bed
and asleep. Instead of that he was perched upon a table, and with large,
wide-opened blue eyes was gazing with all the innocence and inquiry of
infancy into his father's face, as if he would there read the mystery of
life and creation, which the wondering gaze of early childhood seems for
ever asking.
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