za Euridice." Eugene felt as if she
were singing to him. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips red.

Her mother remarked after she had finished, "You're in splendid voice
this evening, Christina."

"I feel particularly fit," she replied.

"A wonderful voice--it's like a big red poppy or a great yellow orchid!"
cried Eugene.

Christina thrilled. The description caught her fancy. It seemed true.
She felt something of that in the sounds to which she gave utterance.

"Please sing 'Who is Sylvia,'" he begged a little later. She complied
gladly.

"That was written for you," he said softly as she ceased, for he had
come close to the piano. "You image Sylvia for me." Her cheeks colored
warmly.

"Thanks," she nodded, and her eyes spoke too. She welcomed his daring
and she was glad to let him know it.

CHAPTER XXII

The chief trouble with his present situation, and with the entrance of
these two women into his life, and it had begun to be a serious one to
him, was that he was not making money. He had been able to earn about
$1200 the first year; the second he made a little over two thousand, and
this third year he was possibly doing a little better. But in view of
what he saw around him and what he now knew of life, it was nothing. New
York presented a spectacle of material display such as he had never
known existed. The carriages on Fifth Avenue, the dinners at the great
hotels, the constant talk of society functions in the newspapers, made
his brain dizzy. He was inclined to idle about the streets, to watch the
handsomely dressed crowds, to consider the evidences of show and
refinement everywhere, and he came to the conclusion that he was not
living at all, but existing. Art as he had first dreamed of it, art had
seemed not only a road to distinction but also to affluence. Now, as he
studied those about him, he found that it was not so. Artists were never
tremendously rich, he learned. He remembered reading in Balzac's story
"Cousin Betty," of a certain artist of great distinction who had been
allowed condescendingly by one of the rich families of Paris to marry a
daughter, but it was considered a great come down for her. He had hardly
been able to credit the idea at the time, so exalted was his notion of
the artist. But now he was beginning to see that it represented the
world's treatment of artists. There were in America a few who were very
popular--meretriciously so he thought in certain cases--who were sai