So I believe in some
hearts, undefiled by the breath of conventionality and cant, may lie the
true love of the poets, 'lasting, and knowing not change.'"

"Ah! you're too ideal for me," cried Waldemar, smiling at her impetuous
earnestness. "You are all enthusiasm, imagination, effervescence----"

"I am not," she answered, impatiently. "I can be very practical when I
like; I made myself the loveliest wreath yesterday; quite as pretty as
Bella buys at Mitchell's for five times the sum mine cost me. That was
very realistic, wasn't it?"

"No. That exercised your fancy. You wouldn't do--what do you call
it?--plain work, with half the gusto; now, would you?"

Valerie made a _moue mutine_, expressive of entire repudiation of such
employment.

"I thought so," laughed Falkenstein. "You idealists are like the fire in
the grate yonder; you flame up very hot and bright for a moment, but
'the sparks fly upward and expire,' and if they're not fed with some
fresh fuel they soon die out into lifeless cinders."

"On the contrary," said Valerie, quickly, "we are like wood fires, and
burn red down to the last ash."

"Mr. Falkenstein, come and look at this little 'Ghirlandaio,'" said
Bella, turning round, with an angry light in her eyes; "it is such a
gem. Papa bought it the other day."

Waldemar rose reluctantly enough to inspect the "Ghirlandaio,"
manufactured in a back slum, and smoked into proper antiquity to pigeon,
under the attractive title of an "Old Master," the brewer and his
species, and found Miss Cashranger's ignorant dilettantism very tame
after Valerie's animated arguments and gesticulation. But he was too old
a hand at such game not to know how to take advantage of even an enemy's
back-handed stroke, and he turned the discussion on art to an inspection
of Valerie's portfolio, over whose croquis and pastels, and
water-colors, he lingered as long as he could, till the clock reminded
him that it was time to walk on into Eaton Square, where he was going to
dine at his father's. The governor excepted, Falkenstein had little
rapport with his family. His brother was as chilly disagreeable in
private life as he was popularly considered irreproachable in public,
and as pragmatical and uncharitable as your immaculate individuals
ordinarily are. His sisters were cold, conventional women, as utterly
incapable of appreciating him as of allowing the odor of his Latakia in
their drawing-room, and so it chanced that Waldemar, a f