the tapestries, which were not tapestries, but paintings on rep. He
remembered--the Fountain of Love, not Biblical.

The fountain, surely enough, spouted from a marble dolphin squeezed in
the chubby arms of a marble Love, and was four times repeated, at
different hours of the day and seasons of the year. In spring, at dawn,
a maiden filled her cup at it. At noon, in summer, the same maiden and a
youth drank from it with cheeks close together. In autumn, at sunset,
the maiden, sadder of countenance, stared at the fountain, visibly
wrapped in memories. In winter the fountain stood solitary and frozen,
Cupid had a hood of snow, the purplish twilight landscape was drowned in
melancholy.

Gerald's mind made an excursion from the things before him to the studio
where those facile works of art had been produced. The place was
imaginary, and the artist not altogether clear, but the features of the
second figure which he saw, the visitor at the studio, were well-known
to him, and the sentiments of the artist receiving the order to treat a
subject in four large panels for a rich _forestiera_ not difficult
to estimate.

* * * * *

The ball had been raging, if one may so express it, for several hours,
the feast was at its height, when Aurora, confused with the richness and
multiplicity of her impressions, and aware of a happy fatigue, withdrew
from her guests to be for a few minutes just a quiet looker-on. She
chose as her retreat a spot at the curve of the stairs, where she felt
herself in the midst of everything and yet isolated. Her back was toward
the persons going up and down; she leaned on the sloping balustrade, and
breathed and rested and hoped no one would notice her for a little
while, all being delightfully engaged.

She could see a little way into the ball-room, where certain younger
couples, mad for dancing, were making the most of the time when the
floor was relatively empty, the supper-room being proportionately full.
Supper over, the cotillion would begin. She could see Leslie, in
Nile-green crape, eating an ice out in the hall with that American boy,
the singer, whose conceit, by his looks, had not yet been made to
totter. She could hear the merry sound of spoons and glasses, and knew
what good things were being consumed. All the house was involved in
festivity, and resounding with it. In the upstairs sitting-room were
card-tables. In the improvised conservatory opp