tle picture, and hid her face with her hands.
Warkworth watched her uncomfortably, and at last drew her hands away.

"What are you thinking of?" he said, almost with violence. "Don't shut
me out!"

"I am not jealous now," she said, looking at him piteously. "I don't
hate her. And if she knew all--she couldn't--hate me."

"No one could hate her. She is an angel. But she is not my Julie!" he
said, vehemently, and he thrust the little picture into his
pocket again.

"Tell me," she said, after a pause, laying her hand on his knee, "when
did you begin to think of me--differently? All the winter, when we used
to meet, you never--you never loved me then?"

"How, placed as I was, could I let myself think of love? I only knew
that I wanted to see you, to talk to you, to write to you--that the day
when we did not meet was a lost day. Don't be so proud!" He tried to
laugh at her. "You didn't think of me in any special way, either. You
were much too busy making bishops, or judges, or academicians. Oh,
Julie, I was so afraid of you in those early days!"

"The first night we met," she said, passionately, "I found a carnation
you had worn in your button-hole. I put it under my pillow, and felt for
it in the dark like a talisman. You had stood between me and Lady Henry
twice. You had smiled at me and pressed my hand--not as others did, but
as though you understood _me_, myself--as though, at least, you wished
to understand. Then came the joy of joys, that I could help you--that I
could do something for you. Ah, how it altered life for me! I never
turned the corner of a street that I did not count on the chance of
seeing you beyond--suddenly--on my path. I never heard your voice that
it did not thrill me from head to foot. I never made a new friend or
acquaintance that I did not ask myself first how I could thereby serve
you. I never saw you come into the room that my heart did not leap. I
never slept but you were in my dreams. I loathed London when you were
out of it. It was paradise when you were there."

Straining back from him as he still held her hands, her whole face and
form shook with the energy of her confession. Her wonderful hair,
loosened from the thin gold bands in which it had been confined during
the evening, fell in a glossy confusion about her brow and slender neck;
its black masses, the melting brilliance of the eyes, the tragic freedom
of the attitude gave both to form and face a wild and poignant beauty.

Wa