er like a great symphony. I fell into dreaming of my music. That's
when I am at his mercy. There's no one like him. I must detest music to
get free from him. How can I? He is like the God of music."

Wilfrid now remembered certain of her allusions to this rival, who had
hitherto touched him very little. Perhaps it was partly the lovely scene
that lifted him to a spiritual jealousy, partly his susceptibility to
a sentimental exaggeration, and partly the mysterious new charm in
Emilia's manner, that was as a bordering lustre, showing how the full
orb was rising behind her.

"His name?" Wilfrid asked for.

Emilia's lips broke to the second letter of the alphabet; but she cut
short the word. "Why should you hear it? And now that you are here, you
drive him away. And the best is," she laughed, "I am sure you will
not remember any of his pieces. I wish I could not--not that it's the
memory; but he seems all round me, up in the air, and when the trees
move all together...you chase him away, my lover!"

It was like a break in music, the way that Emilia suddenly closed her
sentence; coming with a shock of flattering surprise upon Wilfrid.

Then she pursued: "My English lover! I am like Italy, in chains to that
German, and you...but no, no, no! It's not quite a likeness, for my
German is not a brute. I have seen his picture in shop-windows: the wind
seemed in his hair, and he seemed to hear with his eyes: his forehead
frowning so. Look at me, and see. So!"

Emilia pressed up the hair from her temples and bent her brows.

"It does not increase your beauty," said Wilfrid.

"There's the difference!" Emilia sighed mildly. "He sees angels,
cherubs, and fairies, and imps, and devils; or he hears them: they come
before him from far off, in music. They do to me, now and then. Only now
and then, when my head's on fire.--My lover!"

Wilfrid pressed his mouth to the sweet instrument. She took his kiss
fully, and gave her own frankly, in return. Then, sighing a very little,
she said: "Do not kiss me much."

"Why not?"

"No!"

"But, look at me."

"I will look at you. Only take my hand. See the moon is getting whiter.
The water there is like a pool of snakes, and then they struggle out,
and roll over and over, and stream on lengthwise. I can see their long
flat heads, and their eyes: almost their skins. No, my lover! do not
kiss me. I lose my peace."

Wilfrid was not willing to relinquish his advantage, and the tender
deep to