from society is quite as deleterious as the want of
out-door air and sunshine. Your mind, debarred from communion with
your race and denied novel and refreshing themes, centres in its own
operations and creations, broods over threadbare topics until it has
grown morbid; and, instead of deriving healthful nourishment from the
world that surrounds it, exhausts and consumes itself, like fabled
Araline, spinning its substance into filmy nothings."

"Filmy nothings! Thank you. I flatter myself, when I am safely housed
under marble, the world will place a different estimate upon some
things I shall leave behind to challenge criticism."

"How much value will public plaudits possess for ears sealed by death?
Mrs. Gerome, you are too lonely; you must have companionship that will
divert your thoughts."

"Not I, indeed! All that I require, I have in abundance,--music,
books, and my art. Here I am independent, for remember that he was a
petted son of fame, who said, 'Books are the true Elysian fields,
where the spirits of the dead converse, and into these fields a
mortal may venture unappalled. What king's court can boast such
company,--what school of philosophy such wisdom?' Verily if you
had ever examined my library you would not imagine I lacked
companionship. Why sir, yonder,--

'The old, dead authors throng me round about,
And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves look out.'

Count Oxenstiern spoke truly, when he declared, 'Occupied with the
great minds of antiquity, we are no longer annoyed by contemporaneous
fools.'"

She rose and pointed to the handsome cases in the rear room, filled
with choice volumes; and, while she stood with one arm resting on the
easel, Dr. Grey looked searchingly at her.

To-day there was a _spirituelle_ beauty in the white face that he had
never seen before; and the large eloquent eyes were full of dreamy
sunset radiance, unlike their wonted steely glitter. A change, vague
and indefinable, but unmistakable, had certainly passed over that
countenance since its owner came to reside at "Solitude," and, instead
of marring, had heightened its loveliness. The features were thinner,
the cheeks had lost something of their pure oval moulding, and the
delicate nostrils were almost transparent in their waxen curves; but
the arch of the lip was softened and lowered, and the face was like
that of some marble goddess on which mid-summer moonshine sleeps.

Her white mull robe was edged at the s