t
river, of the sorrows, of the terrors, of the crimes."

"Mark!" said Catherine in amazement.

"Nothing to call us away from our idle happiness here!" he continued.
"Do you say--nothing?"

"Why--no. For we are free; we have no ties. You have no profession,
Mark. You have no art even to call you back to England. Dear father--how
he worships the arts!"

"And you, Kitty--you?"

Mark spoke with a curious pressure of excitement.

"He has taught me to love them too."

"How much, Kitty? As he loves them, more than anything else on earth?"

She had never heard him speak at all like this. She answered:

"Ah no. For my mother----"

She paused.

"My mother has made me understand that there is something greater than
any art, more important, more beautiful."

"What can that be?"

"Oh, Mark--religion!"

He leaned over the railing at her side, and the white and red roses that
embraced the pillar shook against his thick dark hair in the infant
breeze of evening.

"But there are many religions," he said. "A man's art may be his
religion."

A troubled look came into her eyes and made them like her mother's.

"Oh no, Mark."

"Yes, Kitty," he said, with growing earnestness, putting aside his
reserve for the first time with her. "Indeed it may."

"You mean when he uses it to do good?"

He shook his head. The roses shivered.

"The true artist never thinks of that. To have a definite moral purpose
is destructive."

The City at their feet was sinking into shadow now, and the air grew
cold, filled with the snowy breath of the Sierra.

"When we go back to England I will teach you the right way to follow an
art, to worship it; the way that will be mine."

"Yours, Mark? But I don't understand."

"No," he said. "You don't understand all of me yet, Kitty. Do you want
to?"

"Yes," she said.

There was a sound of fear in her voice. Mark sat down beside her and put
his arm round her.

"Kitty," he began. "I'm only on the threshold of my life, of my real
life, my life with you and with my work."

"You are going to work?" she exclaimed.

"Yes. That bell just now seemed to strike the hour of commencement--to
tell me it was time for me to begin. I should like, some day--far in the
future, Kitty,--to hear it strike that other hour, the hour when I must
finish, when the little bit of work that I can do in the world is done.
I shan't be afraid of that hour any more than I'm afraid of this one.
Perhaps, when you and I