ndying art and beauty! Those days are
past: despite what I suffered in them they had their joys for me. Yes; I
suffered at those concerts. I must ever see the one face which for me
blotted out all others in the room, and endure the silent contempt which
I believed I saw upon it. Probably it was my own feeling of inward
self-contempt which made me believe I saw that expression there. His
face had for me a miserable, basilisk-like attraction. When I was there
he was there, I must look at him and endure the silent, smiling disdain
which I at least believed he bestowed upon me. How did he contrive to do
it? How often our eyes met, and every time it happened he looked me full
in the face, and never would give me the faintest gleam of recognition!
It was as though I looked at two diamonds, which returned my stare
unwinkingly and unseeingly. I managed to make myself thoroughly
miserable--pale and thin with anxiety and self-reproach I let this man,
and the speculation concerning him, take up my whole thoughts, and I
kept silence, because I dreaded so intensely lest any question should
bring out the truth. I smiled drearily when I thought that there
certainly was no danger of any one but Miss Hallam ever knowing it, for
the only person who could have betrayed me chose now, of deliberate
purpose, to cut me as completely as I had once cut him.

As if to show very decidedly that he did intend to cut me, I met him one
day, not in the street, but in the house, on the stairs. He sprung up
the steps, two at a time, came to a momentary pause on the landing, and
looked at me. No look of surprise, none of recognition. He raised his
hat; that was nothing; in ordinary politeness he would have done it had
he never seen me in his life before. The same cold, bright, hard glance
fell upon me, keen as an eagle's, and as devoid of every gentle
influence as the same.

I silently held out my hand.

He looked at it for a moment, then with a grave coolness which chilled
me to the soul, murmured something about "not having the honor," bowed
slightly, and stepping forward, walked into Vincent's room.

I was going to the room in which my piano stood, where I had my music
lessons, for they had told me that Herr von Francius was waiting. I
looked at him as I went into the room. How different he was from that
other man; darker, more secret, more scornful-looking, with not less
power, but so much less benevolence.

I was _distrait_, and sung exceedingl