check, and modified in the direction of
the Greek ideal. Those columns, supporting the broad portico, hark
back to the Parthenon, don't they? I like that taste and flavor of the
classic."

She listened in much the same wondering way in which she had regarded
him at the beginning of his outburst on Browning. Was it possible
that, after all, this lover of hers, whose antecedents were so little
known, but whose five years of successful life in Bellevale had won for
him that confidence of his townsmen in which she had partaken, was,
after all, possessed of some of those tastes in art and literature, the
absence of which had been the one thing lacking in his character, as it
appeared to her? It would seem so. And yet, why had he concealed
these things from her, who so passionately longed for intellectual
companionship? Somehow, resentment crept into her heart as she looked
at him, and there was something in his attitude which was not frank and
bold, as she liked to see a man--but this would not do. He was so
lovely in his provision for the future, and surely his conversation
disclosed that he had those tastes and that knowledge!

"I think the moon must be letting me look at its other side to-night,"
said she. "Have you been saving up the artist and poet in you, to show
them to me now?"

"Oh, no," said he, "not at all--why, any one knows these little things.
Now let's go through the arrangement of the chambers; shall we?"

"Not to-night, if you please. Let us sit by the fire again. It will
be a grand house, dear. Sometimes I think, too grand for Bellevale;
and quite often I feel, too grand, too elegant--for me."

"Who then," answered Florian, who saw his conversational duty, a
dead-sure thing, and went for it there and then, "who then could have
such a house, or ought to have it, if not you?"

The girl looked questioningly, pathetically at him, as if she missed
something of the convincing in his words.

"To deny that you feel so--felt so about it when you gave orders for
the building, would be foolish," said she at last. "And it was very
dear of you to do it. But once a man, having a little gem which he
thought of perfect water, placed it in a setting so large and so
cunningly wrought that nobody ever saw the little stone, unless it was
pointed out to them."

"He saw it," said Florian, "whenever he wanted to--and no setting can
be too beautiful for a moon-stone."

He felt that he was rallying nobly.