ifies everything. Mere suggestions of
music sufficed. The lady in the ballad had been wronged. Lo! it was
the lady before him; and soft horns blew; he smelt the languid
night-flowers; he saw the stars crowd large and close above the
arid plain this lady leaning at her window desolate, pouring out her
abandoned heart.

Heroes know little what they owe to champagne.

The lady wandered to Venice. Thither he followed her at a leap. In
Venice she was not happy. He was prepared for the misery of any woman
anywhere. But, oh! to be with her! To glide with phantom-motion through
throbbing street; past houses muffled in shadow and gloomy legends;
under storied bridges; past palaces charged with full life in dead
quietness; past grand old towers, colossal squares, gleaming quays, and
out, and on with her, on into the silver infinity shaking over seas!

Was it the champagne? the music? or the poetry? Something of the two
former, perhaps: but most the enchantress playing upon him. How many
instruments cannot clever women play upon at the same moment! And this
enchantress was not too clever, or he might have felt her touch. She
was no longer absolutely bent on winning him, or he might have seen a
manoeuvre. She liked him--liked none better. She wished him well. Her
pique was satisfied. Still he was handsome, and he was going. What she
liked him for, she rather--very slightly--wished to do away with, or
see if it could be done away with: just as one wishes to catch a pretty
butterfly, without hurting its patterned wings. No harm intended to the
innocent insect, only one wants to inspect it thoroughly, and enjoy
the marvel of it, in one's tender possession, and have the felicity of
thinking one could crush it, if one would.

He knew her what she was, this lady. In Seville, or in Venice, the spot
was on her. Sailing the pathways of the moon it was not celestial light
that illumined her beauty. Her sin was there: but in dreaming to save,
he was soft to her sin--drowned it in deep mournfulness.

Silence, and the rustle of her dress, awoke him from his musing. She
swam wave-like to the sofa. She was at his feet.

"I have been light and careless to-night, Richard. Of course I meant it.
I must be happy with my best friend going to leave me."

Those witch underlids were working brightly.

"You will not forget me? and I shall try...try..."

Her lips twitched. She thought him such a very handsome fellow.

"If I change--if I can chang