aving been informed of his friend's good
fortune, volunteered a loan of a hundred dollars, and accompanied him to
a fashionable tailor, where he underwent a pleasing metamorphosis.

V.

In Norway the ladies dress with the innocent purpose of protecting
themselves against the weather; if this purpose is still remotely
present in the toilets of American women of to-day, it is, at all
events, sufficiently disguised to challenge detection, very much like a
primitive Sanscrit root in its French and English derivatives. This was
the reflection which was uppermost in Halfdan's mind as Edith, ravishing
to behold in the airy grace of her fragrant morning toilet, at the
appointed time took her seat at his side before the piano. Her presence
seemed so intense, so all-absorbing, that it left no thought for
the music. A woman, with all the spiritual mysteries which that name
implies, had always appeared to him rather a composite phenomenon,
even apart from those varied accessories of dress, in which as by an
inevitable analogy, she sees fit to express the inner multiformity of
her being. Nevertheless, this former conception of his, when compared
to that wonderful complexity of ethereal lines, colors, tints and
half-tints which go to make up the modern New York girl, seemed
inexpressibly simple, almost what plain arithmetic must appear to a man
who has mastered calculus.

Edith had opened one of those small red-covered volumes of Chopin where
the rich, wondrous melodies lie peacefully folded up like strange exotic
flowers in an herbarium. She began to play the fantasia impromtu, which
ought to be dashed off at a single "heat," whose passionate impulse
hurries it on breathlessly toward its abrupt finale. But Edith toiled
considerably with her fingering, and blurred the keen edges of each
swift phrase by her indistinct articulation. And still there was a
sufficiently ardent intention in her play to save it from being a
failure. She made a gesture of disgust when she had finished, shut the
book, and let her hands drop crosswise in her lap.

"I only wanted to give you a proof of my incapacity," she said, turning
her large luminous gaze upon her instructor, "in order to make you duly
appreciate what you have undertaken. Now, tell me truly and honestly,
are you not discouraged?"

"Not by any means," replied he, while the rapture of her presence
rippled through his nerves, "you have fire enough in you to make an
admirable musi