as very fair. He stole a long glance at her as she leaned back
in her low wicker chair--the fond glance of a lover--and he felt his
keenly artistic sense stirred from its very depths by her purely
physical beauty. The firelight was casting strange gleams upon the deep
golden hair which waved about her oval face and shapely forehead in
picturesque unrestraint, and there was an ethereal glow in her exquisite
complexion, a light in her eyes, which seemed called up by some unusual
excitement.

The setting of the picture, too, was perfect. Her ivory satin gown hung
in long straight lines about her slim perfect outline with all the grace
of Greek drapery, unrelieved save by one large bunch of Neapolitan
violets nestling amongst the folds of old lace which filled up the open
space of her bodice. He stood and looked at her with a strange confusion
of feelings. A new life was burning in his veins, and for the first time
since his boyhood he doubted his absolute self-mastery. Dared he stay
there? Could he sit by her side, and bandy idle words with her?

The silence had lasted for several minutes, and was beginning to possess
something of that peculiar eloquence which such silences usually have.
At last she raised her eyes, and looked at him standing motionless and
thoughtful amongst the shadows of the room, and at the first glance he
felt his strength grow weak, and his passionate love rising up like a
living force. For there was in her eyes, and in her face, and in her
voice when she spoke, something of that softening change which
transfuses a woman's being when she loves, and lets the secret go from
her--a sort of mute yielding, an abandonment, having in it a subtle
essence of unconscious invitation.

"Come and talk to me," she said softly. "Why do you stand out there?"

He made one last despairing effort. With a strangely unnatural laugh, he
drew a chair to her side and began to talk rapidly, never once letting
his eyes rest upon her loveliness, striving to keep his thoughts fixed
upon his subject, but all the time acutely conscious of her presence. He
talked of many things with a restless energy which more than once caused
her to look up at him in wonderment. He strove even to keep her from
answering him, lest the magic of her voice should turn the trembling
scale. For her sake he unlocked the inmost recesses of his mind, and all
the rich store of artistic sensations, of jealously preserved memories,
came flooding out, clo