st with
Martia, the north came back to him--through the open window as it
were, with the fire-flies and fragrances, and the song of fifty
nightingales. It was for him a moment of deep and harassing emotion
and keen anxiety. He leaned over the window-sill and looked out on
the starlit heavens, and whispered aloud the little speech he had
prepared:

"Martia, I have done my best. I would make any sacrifice to obey
you, but I cannot give up my freedom to love the woman that attracts
me as I have never been attracted before. I would sooner live a poor
and unsuccessful straggler in the art I have chosen, with her to
help me live, than be the mightiest man in England without her--even
with Julia, whom I admire as much, and even more!

"One can't help these things. They may be fancies, and one may live
to repent them; but while they last they are imperious, not to be
resisted. It's an instinct, I suppose; perhaps even a form of
insanity! But I love Leah's little-finger nail better than Julia's
lovely face and splendid body and all her thousands.

"Besides, I will not drag Julia down from her high position in the
world's eye, even for a day, nor owe anything to either man or woman
except love and fidelity! It grieves me deeply to disappoint you,
though I cannot understand your motives. If you love me as you say
you do, you ought to think of my happiness and honor before my
worldly success and prosperity, about which I don't care a button,
except for Leah's sake.

"Besides, I know myself better than you know me. I'm not one of
those hard, strong, stern, purposeful, Napoleonic men, with wills of
iron, that clever, ambitious women conceive great passions for!

[Illustration: "'MARTIA, I HAVE DONE MY BEST'"]

"I'm only a 'funny man'--a _gringalet-jocrisse!_ And now that I'm quite
grown up, and all my little funniments are over, I'm only fit to sit
and paint, with my one eye, in my little corner, with a contented little
wife, who won't want me to do great things and astonish the world.
There's no place like home; faire la popotte ensemble au coin du
feu--c'est le ciel!

"And if I'm half as clever as you say, it'll all come out in my
painting, and I shall be rich and famous, and all off my own bat.
I'd sooner be Sir Edwin Landseer than Sir Robert Peel, or Pam, or
Dizzy!

"Even to retain your love and protection and interest in me, which I
value almost as much as I value life itself, I can't do as you wish.
Don't desert me,