a's written command,
his head full of perplexing thoughts.

Who was Martia? What was she? "A disembodied conscience?" Whose? Not
his own, which counselled the opposite course.

He had once seen a man at a show with a third rudimentary leg
sticking out behind, and was told this extra limb belonged to a
twin, the remaining portions of whom had not succeeded in getting
themselves begotten and born. Could Martia be a frustrated and
undeveloped twin sister of his own, that interested herself in his
affairs, and could see with his eyes and hear with his ears, and had
found the way of communicating with him during his sleep--and was
yet apart from him, as phenomenal twins are apart from each other,
however closely linked--and had, moreover, not managed to have any
part of her body born into this world at all?

She wrote like him; her epistolary style was his very own, every
turn of phrase, every little mannerism. The mystery of it
overwhelmed him again, though he had grown somewhat accustomed to
the idea during the last twelvemonth. _Why_ was she so anxious he
should marry Julia? Had he, situated as he was, the right to win the
love of this splendid creature, in the face of the world's
opposition and her family's--he, a beggar and a bastard? Would it be
right and honest and fair to her?

And then, again, was he so desperately in love with her, after all,
that he should give up the life of art and toil he had planned for
himself and go through existence as the husband of a rich and
beautiful woman belonging, first of all, to the world and society,
of which she was so brilliant an ornament that her husband must
needs remain in the background forever, even if he were a gartered
duke or a belted earl?

What success of his own would he ever hope to achieve, handicapped
as he would be by all the ease and luxury she would bring him? He
had grown to love the poverty which ever lends such strenuousness to
endeavor. He thought of an engraving he had once taken a fancy to in
Brussels, and purchased and hung up in his bedroom. _I_ have it now!
It is after Gallait, and represents a picturesquely poor violinist
and his violin in a garret, and underneath is written "Art et
liberte."

Then he thought of Julia's lovely face and magnificent body--and all
his manhood thrilled as he recalled the look in her eyes when they
met his the day before.

This was the strongest kind of temptation by which his nature could
ever be assailed--he k