'The present fashion of photographs staring out of every stationer's
window makes a man's face public property,' he told Mary. 'I don't want
every street Arab in London to recognise me.'
'But you are not a public man,' said Mary. 'Your photograph would not be
in all the windows; although, in my humble opinion, you are a very
handsome man.'
Hammond blushed, laughed, and turned the conversation, and Mary had to
exist without any picture of her lover.
'Millais shall paint me in his grand Reynolds manner by-and-by,' he told
Mary.
'Millais! Oh, Jack! When will you and I be able to give a thousand or so
for a portrait?'
'Ah, when, indeed? But we may as well enjoy our day-dreams, like
Alnaschar, without smashing our basket of crockery.'
And now Mary, who had managed to exist without the picture, was to have
the original. He was to be all her own--her master, her lord, her love,
after to-morrow--unto eternity, in life, and in the grave, and in the
dim hereafter beyond the grave, they two were to be one. In heaven there
was to be no marrying or giving in marriage, Mary was told; but her own
heart cried aloud to her that the happily wedded must remain linked in
heaven.
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