on the morning after
his scourging at the hands of the monks, who were as muscular as they
were vindictive.

CHAPTER VI.

COUSIN CLARA.

That man who spends his days in painting a girl's portrait, in talking
to her, and in gazing upon the unfinished portrait when she is not
with him, and occupies his thoughts during the watches of the night in
thinking about her, is perilously near to taking the last and fatal
step. Flight for such a man is the only thing left, and he so seldom
thinks of flight until it is too late.

Arnold was at this point.

"I am possessed by this girl," he might have said had he put his
thoughts into words. "I am haunted by her eyes; her voice lingers on
my ears; I dream of her face, the touch of her fingers is like the
touch of an electric battery." What symptoms are these, so common that
one is almost ashamed to write them down, but the infallible symptoms
of love? And yet he hesitated, not because he doubted himself any
longer, but because he was not independent, and such an engagement
might deprive him at one stroke of all that he possessed. Might? It
certainly would. Yes, the new and beautiful studio, all the things in
it, all his prospects for the future, would have to be given up. "She
is worth more than that," said Arnold, "and I should find work
somehow. But yet, to plunge her into poverty--and to make Clara the
most unhappy of women!"

The reason why Clara would be made the most unhappy of women, was that
Clara was his cousin and his benefactor, to whom he owed everything.
She was the kindest of patrons, and she liked nothing so much as the
lavishing upon her ward everything that he could desire. But she also,
unfortunately, illustrated the truth of Chaucer's teaching, in that
she loved power more than anything else, and had already mapped out
Arnold's life for him.

It was his custom to call upon her daily, to use her house as his own.
When they were separated, they wrote to each other every day; the
relations between them were of the most intimate and affectionate
kind. He advised in all her affairs, while she directed his; it was
understood that he was her heir, and though she was not more than five
and forty or so, and had, apparently, a long life still before her, so
that the succession was distant, the prospect gave him importance. She
had been out of town, and perhaps the fact of a new acquaintance with
so obscure a person as a simple tutor by correspondence, seeme