worth of the practical in man. Still
for Rameau her exquisitely kind and sympathizing nature conceived one of
those sentiments which in woman are almost angel-like. We have seen in
her letters to Madame de Grantmesnil that from the first he inspired her
with a compassionate interest; then the compassion was checked by her
perception of his more unamiable and envious attributes. But now those
attributes, if still existent, had ceased to be apparent to her, and the
compassion became unalloyed. Indeed, it was thus so far increased that
it was impossible for any friendly observer to look at the beautiful
face of this youth, prematurely wasted and worn, without the kindliness
of pity. His prosperity had brightened and sweetened the expression of
that face, but it had not effaced the vestiges of decay; rather perhaps
deepened them, for the duties of his post necessitated a regular labour,
to which he had been unaccustomed, and the regular labour necessitated,
or seemed to him to necessitate, an increase of fatal stimulants. He
imbibed absinthe with everything he drank, and to absinthe he united
opium. This, of course, Isaura knew not, any more than she knew of
his liaison with the "Ondine" of his muse; she saw only the increasing
delicacy of his face and form, contrasted by his increased geniality and
liveliness of spirits, and the contrast saddened her. Intellectually,
too, she felt for him compassion. She recognized and respected in him
the yearnings of a genius too weak to perform a tithe of what, in the
arrogance of youth, it promised to its ambition. She saw, too, those
struggles between a higher and a lower self, to which a weak degree of
genius united with a strong degree of arrogance is so often subjected.
Perhaps she overestimated the degree of genius, and what, if rightly
guided, it could do; but she did, in the desire of her own heavenlier
instinct, aspire to guide it heavenward. And as if she were twenty years
older than himself, she obeyed that desire in remonstrating and warning
and urging, and the young man took all these "preachments" with a
pleased submissive patience. Such, as the new year dawned upon the grave
of the old one, was the position between these two. And nothing more was
heard from Graham Vane.

CHAPTER VI.

It has now become due to Graham Vane, and to his place in the estimation
of my readers, to explain somewhat more distinctly the nature of the
quest in prosecution of which he had sough