tty pink face and brown eyes turned in
simple appeal to him from her pedestal. 'I will tell you all to-morrow;
an that I will!'

He retreated to his own room and lay down meditating. Some quarter of an
hour after she had retreated to hers the mouse-trap clicked again, and
Pierston raised himself on his elbow to listen. The place was so still
and the jerry-built door-panels so thin that he could hear the mouse
jumping about inside the wires of the trap. But he heard no footstep
this time. As he was wakeful and restless he again arose, proceeded
to the kitchen with a light, and removing the mouse reset the trap.
Returning he listened once more. He could see in the far distance the
door of Avice's room; but that thoughtful housewife had not heard the
second capture. From the room came a soft breathing like that of an
infant.

He entered his own chamber and reclined himself gloomily enough. Her
lack of all consciousness of him, the aspect of the deserted kitchen,
the cold grate, impressed him with a deeper sense of loneliness than he
had ever felt before.

Foolish he was, indeed, to be so devoted to this young woman. Her
defencelessness, her freedom from the least thought that there lurked a
danger in their propinquity, were in fact secondary safeguards, not much
less strong than that of her being her mother's image, against risk to
her from him. Yet it was out of this that his depression came.

At sight of her the next morning Pierston felt that he must put an end
to such a state of things. He sent Avice off to the studio, wrote to an
agent for a couple of servants, and then went round to his work. Avice
was busy righting all that she was allowed to touch. It was the girl's
delight to be occupied among the models and casts, which for the first
time she regarded with the wistful interest of a soul struggling to
receive ideas of beauty vaguely discerned yet ever eluding her. That
brightness in her mother's mind which might have descended to the second
Avice with the maternal face and form, had been dimmed by admixture with
the mediocrity of her father's, and by one who remembered like Pierston
the dual organization the opposites could be often seen wrestling
internally.

They were alone in the studio, and his feelings found vent. Putting his
arms round her he said, 'My darling, sweet little Avice! I want to ask
you something--surely you guess what? I want to know this: will you be
married to me, and live here with me a