“Ruth Yetton.”

“Has it ever occurred to you, Miss Yetton,
to offer these sketches for sale?”

“Those!”

“I see not.”

“Are they — worth anything, sir?”

“Yes, decidedly. What price will you put
upon them?”

“Is — a dollar — half a dollar — too much?”

“I will mark them three. They might
bring five. You can call again in a few days,
Miss Yetton, and if they are gone we will
hand you the proceeds, deducting a small
commission. You would find ready sale, I
believe, for as many as you could furnish.”

What visions danced over Miss Yetton's
pale little face as she remembered the overflowing
desk in her trunk. Hunger and want
and fear annihilated. Soup and sirloin every
day for the uncomplaining old man at home,
new clothes for him, fragrantest tobacco,

[figure description] Page 010.[end figure description]

trivial luxuries, now and then a ride outside
the suburbs, now and then an evening at the
play, comfort and rest and safety and pleasure
all the days and nights of his mortal life.
That moment paid for so much. Wealth rose
round her like an exhalation; another possibility
flashed upon her and faded, — she was
half-way to Italy, tossing on the blue sea,
hastening to pictures and shrines and eternal
summer.

The lounger over Rosa Bonheur's portfolio
turned and fastened his glance upon her; she
seemed to feel it, though she was not looking,
for it entered her as a sunbeam parts the
petals of a flower.

The shopman smiled at her roseate countenance.

“Very well,” said he. “I see that we have
struck a vein!” and she tripped away.

So three months' time saw many things
altered. Little gold-pieces clinked, and

[figure description] Page 011.[end figure description]

precious paper rustled, in Miss Yetton's wallet,
and she had left the new devotion of landlady
and fellow-lodgers running to waste, having
found two rooms, in an airier place, that
pleased her fancy. They were part of a house
that stood on the corner of a large, empty
square, seldom reached by the hum of business;
and as the house was old, and had none
of the modern alleviations of life, they were
obtained very reasonably. On the second
floor, with one large window for the sunshine
and one for the square, with a little carpet
pieced out by the cheap Arab mat whose
vivid elm-leaf hue seemed like perpetual fair
weather in the room, with the great chest of
drawers reaching in ancestral splendor almost
to the ceiling, with the home sound of the
clock, sentinel in the recess, the little worktable,
one window full of flowers in pots and
boxes and baskets, a portrait of some sadeyed
lady which she had found exposed in an

[figure description] Page 012.[end figure description]

auction-room, and about which she loved to
weave pathetic romances, two yellow old engravings
from Angelica Kaufmann, where figured
Fancy with the wings springing from her
filleted temples; a lounge of her own fashioning,
piled with purple cushions, and which
became a very comfortable bed at night; with
a glowing fire in the grate, and a little cat
purring before it, — Miss Yetton could hardly
devise the imagination of further comfort.
Their dinners they found in any restaurant,
their breakfasts were a pleasure to contrive.
They took long trips on the horse-cars, which
were the old father's delight; long rides then
into the wintry country, got out at any prospect
of field or wood, and returned laden with
trailers of gray moss, with clusters of scarlet
hips, with withered ferns, blue juniper-berries,
dried cones, bunches of beautiful brown-bearded
grasses, which, disposed here and
there, tasselled over the dark wood of the

[figure description] Page 013.[end figure description]

picture-frames, or, set in tapering glasses, kept
her sitting-room always sweetly ornamented,
till in summer she could make it a very bower
with all manner of flaunting herb or shrinking
bud, with great boughs of the snowy
medlar, and with long wreaths of the spiced
sweet-brier. Whenever, too, Miss Yetton had
a cent that she could religiously spare, —
for besides her little savings she had her little
charities, — she stole with it between the lofty
ranks of some greenhouse and won the gardener's
heart, and brought back threefold its
worth to lay massed in gorgeous bloom about
the room; while her ever passive companion
sat, lost in a bewildered enchantment, among
all the glowing greenery, the springing stems
and bending buds whose life leaped up so
riotously to break in blossom, — sat abandoned
to the soft damp warmth of atmosphere that
was like some other planet's, — sat there in
the emeraldine lustre that, filtering through

[figure description] Page 014.[end figure description]

the vine-leaved roof, seemed to have dripped
a shining sediment in great bunches of translucent
grapes, — thrilled through all his sense,
and growing ever rapt and paler, till the child
hurried him away lest his soul should exhale
entirely in the strange region of heavily-freighted
air, and be lost among all its other
ecstatic odors. Sometimes moreover, of an
afternoon, she slipped with the quiet old man
into an orchestra-concert; and afterwards the
dim dreamwork and sweet thoughts that had
been invoked by the murmuring music shaped
themselves to tint and color and design as
she walked round the Common in the sunset,
or went out and leaned a moment over the
arches of the bridges, and marked how the
green light fell like damp sunshine among
their shadows. Few of all those who on their
rambles were wont with interest to encounter
this little woman supporting the spiritual, frail
form beside her, associated the two in any

[figure description] Page 015.[end figure description]

measure with the beautiful creations of pencil
and paper that at that very moment perhaps
they treasured in their hand. It is true that
often in the after-dark hours she ached to
have her father's old intelligence back among
these pleasures, to feel once more the old
reliance on his omnipotence, to have her mother
sharing these long-desired comforts; but
when the feverish pain was by, with her constant
work, with her pleasant fancies, with
her brightening hopes and joyful attainment,
Miss Yetton was as happy a little maid as a
city roof can cover.

Without premeditation or affectation or
search, Miss Yetton had found an art. An
art in which she stood almost alone. As she
began to give herself rules, one that she found
absolute was to work from nothing but the
life. During the winter, and while yet her
means were very small, the opposite course
had been needful; but even then some little

[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]

card where a handful of brown stems and
ruddy berries from the snowy roadside seemed
to have been thrown, or where she had caught
just the topmost tips of the bare tree in the
square, lined like any evanescent sea-moss,
delicate as the threads of smoke that wander
upward, faintly tinged in rosy purple and
etched upon a calm deep sky with most exquisite
and intricate entanglement of swinging
spray and swelling bud, — even then things like
these commanded twice the price of any copy
of her past sketches. Something of this was
due to growth perhaps. Already she felt that
she handled her pencil with a swifter decision,
and there was courage in her color. But
when spring came she revelled. She took
jaunts deeper and deeper among the outlying
regions. One day, luncheon in pocket, she
went pulling apart old fallen twigs and bits
of stone on the edge of a chasm where dark
and slumbrous waters forever mantled, and

[figure description] Page 017.[end figure description]

returning the forty miles in the afternoon train
brought home with her bountiful bunches, root
and blood-red leaf, downy bud and flaky flower
of the purple hepatica, — the hepatica, whose
pristine element, floating out of heaven and
sinking into the sod with every star-sown fall
of snow, answers the first touch of wooing
sunshine, assoiled of dazzle, enriched with
some tincture of the mould's own strain, and
borrowing from the crumbling granites that
companion it all winter an atom of fibre, a
moment of permanence: breezy bits of gold
and purple at last, cuddled in among old
gnarls and roots, and calling the wild March
sponsor. These before her, she wrought patiently
on ivory with all delicate veinery and
tender tint, painting in a glossy jet of background,
till, rivalling the Florentine, the dainty
mosaic was ready for the cunning goldsmith
who should shape it to the pin that gathers
the laces deep in any lady's bosom. Then,

[figure description] Page 018.[end figure description]

when the brush had extracted their last essence,
some messenger of the year, some little
stir in her pulse, warned her of hurrying
May-flowers, and she sped down to the Plymouth
woods, within sound of their rustling
sea-shore, to pull up clustered wet trailing
masses, flushed in warmest wealthiest pink
with the heartsomest flower that blows. And
there, in the milder weather, she took her
only familiar, that he might plunge his trembling
hands deep down among the flowers, or,
sitting on a mossy knoll, listen to the wild
song of the pines above. Sometimes too she
stood with him through long reveries in the
wide rhodora marshes, where some fleece of
burning mist seemed to be fallen and caught
and tangled in countless filaments upon the
bare twigs and sprays that lovingly detained
it. At other times she lingered over the
blushing wild-honeysuckle, and every tube
of fragrance poured strength and light into

[figure description] Page 019.[end figure description]

her spirit. Always in gathering her trophies
from among their natural surroundings she
felt half her picture painted. Near the city
there were fair gardens which she knew, and
which in return for her homage gave her the
sweet-pea, fluttering, balancing, tiptoe-fine,
and pansies for remembrance; while in the
farmers' orchards great broken boughs were
put at the service of the young girl with the
happy old man upon her arm. Then came a
book of tree-blossoms, — those glad things that
are in such haste to crowd into light and air
before the leaves can get chance to burst their
shining scales, — where the faint green vapor
of the elm, the callow cloud that floats
about the oak, the red flame of the maple,
the golden, dusty tassels of the willow, —
brimmed with being, whose very perfume
seemed shaken about themselves on the paper,—
hedged in with their wildness those caught
and captived beauties but half tamed with

[figure description] Page 020.[end figure description]

all the years, the fair fruit-flowers, ever a
sweeter surprise that their frail petals wreathe
such rugged boughs, — the pear rivalling the
cornel, the cherry like a suspended snowstorm
that has caught life among the branches, the
apple veined finely as the blush on any cheek,
with its twisted stem where the aged lichens
have laid their shield, the peach, like some
splendid orchid, in its fantastic shape, with
lifted wings, yet clinging to the bough, and
full of a deep rich rosiness that already holds
the luscious juices and voluptuous savor of
the perfected growth, not without a hint of
the subtly sweet poison in its heart. Then
Miss Yetton busied herself over a set of bookmarks
with a wild-flower for every day of the
year, half of April filled with violets, white
and blue, the Alpine pedate, and the bright
roadside freak of the golden-yellow, while for
love she slipped among them that other, an
atom of summer midnight, double, says some

[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]

one, as a little rose, the only blue rose we
shall ever have; and for the days whereon
no blossom burst, she had a tip of tiny hemlock
cones, the moss from an old stone, a
bunch of berries forsaken by the birds, some
silky seedling unstripped of the rude breezes.
In all these treasures there was no flaw; the
harebell shaking in the wind and tangled
among its grasses, the wild rose whose root
so few rains had washed that there had settled
a deep color in its cup, the cardinal with the
very glitter of the stream it loves meshed
like a silver mist behind its scarlet sheen,
those slipshod little anemones that cannot stop
to count their petals, but take one from their
neighbor or leave another behind them, all
the tiny stellate things wherein the constant
crystallic force of the ancient earth steals
into light, the radiant water-lily, — these held
no dead pressed beauty, but the very spirit
and springing life of the flower. Upon them,

[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]

too, she lavished fancy; among the sprays
little hands appeared to help the climbing
vine, here a humming-bird and a scarlet rock-columbine
seemed taking flight together, there
a wasp with the purple enamel of armor on
his wing tilted against some burly husbandman
of a bee to seek the good graces of the
hooded nymph in an arethusa; — they were
little gems, and brought the price of gems.
At length, when — summer ended, and her
tramps among pastures on fire with their burning
huckleberry-bushes just begun — there
came an order from across the seas for a book
of autumn leaves, accompanied by a check
for two hundred dollars, Miss Yetton thought
her fortune made.

She was sitting at work on this order, one
afternoon while her father slept, and with a
new friend beside her. This friend had not
long since made her acquaintance, and there
had sprung up between them one of those

[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]

sudden intimacies which may happen to people
who have long desired and needed them,
and who are complementary each to the other.

“I am a poor little actress,” said Charmian;
“poor, I suppose, as you can be. I do not
have a great deal of money, but I do not
spend all I have. I lay up a trifle for the
rainy days, and I have squandered some on
certain water-colors. I do not mean to squander
any more, because now I shall have you,
water-colors and all, and if ever you find
yourself quite alone in the breathing world
you are to come and paint in my sitting-room,
or else I shall move, bag and baggage, and
con my parts in yours.”

So it was arranged. Charmian was exactly
what she said, a poor little actress, yet a
very good one; no star, but one who played
either Juliet or Lady Macbeth on occasion,
by the best light that was in her; at some
day, perhaps, a sudden inflorescence of

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

character might take place, and she would dazzle
the world of footlights pale. She felt the possibility
ever stirring within her, — it made her
restive and bold; but to-day she was a poor
little actress with a steady engagement.

Miss Yetton sat working in the black, lustrous
berries, among the carbuncle splendors
of the tupelo branch. Charmian was furbishing
Kate Percy's bodice that it might do no
dishonor to Ophelia's petticoat, and as they
wrought, their tongues ran merrily. At length
Charmian folded her work and rose, and,
going, uttered the sentence that sealed little
Ruth Yetton's fate.

“I 'm not in the afterpiece to-night,” said
she, “so I shall be out at nine, and I 'm
going to bring Constant Azarian to see you.”

“Constant Azarian?”

“Yes. He says he used to know you, and
now your things are quite the rage, you see,
he 'd like to know you again. Patronage is

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

his cue. He made much of me at my début,
thinking I would shortly extinguish Rachel.
Rachel yet burns, — and like a chiselled
flame! I hardly met his expectations, but
we 've always been on good terms.”

“Constant Azarian!”

“Oh, so you remember him? That 's bad,
or good, — tell me which! Really I don't
know whether to bring him here or not. He
is such an impostor, so perfectly charming
outside — and inside, — but there is no inside;
he is as shining and as hollow as a glass
bubble.”

“Oh, — no.”

“I must n't bring him.”

“Yes, do. I thought he could not be here
or he would have found us out. I used to
be fond of him one summer when we were
children. I should like to see him.”

“What if he should ever lay hands on our
friendship, Ruth?”

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

“He?” said Ruth looking up with wondering
eyes, “why, it is no affair of his.”

“Aha! well — I don't know. However, expect
us at nine, and I should so like a cup
of hot tea at that innocent hour. Stop, I
must talk to you a bit. All the girls in town,
I hear, rave over Azarian, though he 's no
match, for his father died not long ago and
left him poor. It was a great flash-in-the-pan.
Azarian had been lapped in luxury, and expected
an inheritance. However, he behaved
very well. He has some talent, he 'd have
gone on the stage, his name alone would draw
good houses for a fortnight and have given
him a pretty pocket-piece, but of course he
could n't rival Booth, and anything less is
plebeian; he has written a farce or two, and
there are dark hints of a tragedy. Then he
has sculptured a little; he had patience to get
through the clay, and money to get through
the plaster, but not genius enough to get

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

through the marble; there 's his great head
still half in the block. Then he has painted
a little, — portraits; but they are horrible; a
brush like a scalpel, it lays people bare to the
core; to look at one of his canvases is like
standing in a dissecting-chamber, where the
knife has gored a gash down some face and
laid open all the nerves and muscles; every
one's hidden sin suddenly flares up and glares
at him. Nobody likes to be excoriated in that
style; so Azarian's portraits don't pay. Meantime,
he was all along a student of medicine,
and is now established in a city practice. So.
There you have him. Sooner lose your heart
to Fra Diavolo. Be warned. Be armed.
Good by.”

Little Miss Yetton laughed to herself as
Charmian closed the door behind her; she
remembered the boy so well, or her ideal of
the boy, who had come in his black clothes
to spend a summer on the farm and to lose

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

his cough. She staid so long with suspended
pencil, dreaming over that season, that the
dark had fallen and the branch before her
begun to fade ere she bethought herself of
work. But her father, busying himself at the
grate, startled her with a clatter of coal-scuttle
and tongs, and she rose and swept her pretty
litter aside.

As the great clock struck nine in the distance
that evening, the long procession of its
sounds issuing on the air with a measured
tread, Miss Yetton piled the coke on her coals
for a dancing cheer of the blaze of molten
sapphire and opal, her little tea-table glittered
in a corner, and as she glanced now and then
toward the door there was an unwonted sparkle
in her eye and a restless red on the pale
cheek.

They came in laughing. Miss Yetton did not
see Charmian, for the other stepped directly
toward her, and, bowing, uttered his name.

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

“Constantine Azarian.”

Her hand just brushed across his palm.
He tossed his head with a motion that threw
back the golden curls. “You don't meet
me now as then,” he said.

“Come,” said Charmian, who had doffed
her things; “none of your old times! To
business. To my cup of tea, and then to
your health.”

“It is Constantine, father,” said Miss Yetton
to the old gentleman, who did not at
all comprehend the unusual proceedings, and
forced to a familiarity which she would not
have chosen; “you remember Constant?”

“Yes, — yes,” replied her father uneasily.
“Why, you're quite a man, sir!”

The guest laughed, exchanged with him a
sentence or two, then slipped over to the others.

“So, Ruth, I have found you at last. Where
have you been hiding?” he demanded, seating
himself, and perfectly at home in the minute.

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

“We have been here a long while. Up
and down. A year in this house,” she answered
quietly.

Her tone nettled him, he raised his eyebrows.
“Come, you want your tea,” he said,
fixing his glance coolly on Charmian.

“Yes, I want my tea, it prevents reaction
after action. But that need n't hinder your
conversation. Did you say your search for
Ruth was severe?” she asked in mischievous
demi-voice.

“No. Why should it have been?”

“Why, indeed?” said she, provoked with
herself, while the red burned into Ruth's
cheek.

“Ruh and I are such dear old friends that
she should have written to me long ago. Why
did n't you, Ruth?”

Blushing and smiling, appeased and pleased,
Ruth passed him his cup without reply. It
was a quaint little cup, a bit of translucent

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

gorgeousness that she had reproduced from
the depths of her trunk and nicely washed
that very evening.

Charmian arrested her arm. “Allow me
to ask, Ruth Yetton,” said she, “where you
came across that hideous little splendor, —
old china worth its weight in gold. Perhaps
you painted it yourself. You have n't been
expending your treasure to delectate Azarian's
lips in that style?”

“Pardon, bella donna,” said Azarian, securing
the disputed object, “it is mine of old, the
viaduct of youthful draughts. I drank from
it every day of one summer. And you have
kept it all this time, Ruth?”

Ruth's little heart leaped that he should
have remembered it, she could not have answered
why; she carried her father his tray
and came back with rosy cheek and dewy
eyes.

“Your tea is mercy itself, Ruth. It puts
the spirit into one.”

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

“A work of supererogation, madonna.”

“It is very nice tea, it was given to me, —
because one cannot buy it; you would hardly
suppose that it was made from flowers,” said
Ruth.

“It looks as though it were strained through
sunshine,” replied Azarian.

“The quality of mercy is not strained,”
interpolated Charmian.

“Shop!” said Azarian.

“O yes, — shop, I dare say. What of that?
Now, Azarian, tell the truth and shame the—;
confess that you think it would be
splendid to be famous, while Ruth there
thinks it horrible to be infamous: but as
for me” —

“Give you liberty or give you death.”

“As for me, — it's very nice to be just unfamous;
and I hope the time will never come
when I shall be too great and dignified, and
too full of sacred genius, to make little jokes

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

about the play, or to pass the butter in a
tragic way. So much for shop!”

“No danger,” said Azarian, with mournfully
exaggerated eyebrows. “You are my
great disappointment.”

“Go along with you! What a plague you
are! Here 's to your confusion. Ach, ach!”
ejaculated Charmian, drinking fast, as if she
would rinse her mouth, “how sick I am of
Portia with her ridiculously unjust justice,
the impostress! Ach!”

“I don't think you 'll be cast for Juliet
again immediately. You made that botch of
it purposely, last evening?”

“And to-morrow night I 'm tamed for the
shrew.”

“I know no better subject.”

“It 's another abominable piece of business!
Just a burlesque of the truth, though, — the
very truth. It 's the way of the world, the
way of a man with a maid. What are we

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

better than any other clay, — only to tread
on, — trample away then!”

“All in character. It is the role of Miss
Ann Thrope. This tea, that is made of
flowers, inverses Cowper, — inebriates, but not
cheers, I fancy.”

“Azarian, unless you conduct with more
propriety, you shall go home directly, and
I will never bring you again!”

“I can come next time alone,” he said,
getting up to saunter about the room and
examine the pictures; till, possessing himself
finally of Ruth's portfolios, and taking a seat
by her father, he went over them all, listening
to the story of each sheet from the old lips
delighted to part in recital.

“He will have more deference to Charmian's
opinions when she returns from her southern
tour; for — I am going away, Ruth.”

“You are going away?”

“Yes: the contract, as tragical factotum

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

and general maid of all work, was signed,
sealed, and delivered to-day, since I left you.”

“O, Charmian, what shall I do?”

“Do without me. If you won't come with
me. What say, Ruth? I should so like to
make you and Mr. Yetton my guests on the
journey!”

“O, it is impossible!”

“I don't see why.”

“But it is so, all the same.”

“Ruth, dear, reconsider it. You renounce
pride, or I content? I shall never, never
desire more happiness than to do finely in
my art and have you with me wherever I go.”

“Nor I; but it can't be now, you know.
Will this last long?”

“No, only a month or two. It is literally
a golden opportunity. But in those regal
Southern cities they love the drama! Dear
rabble! How can any latent genius develop
in such a searching wind of criticism as —

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

as he breathes, for instance? There, in the
warm welcoming weather, the coaxing encouraging
air, the generous permeating sunshine,
the fiery favor and love, one's very soul blossoms.
I feel it in me, Ruth, — those tropical
nights, those passionate plaudits, will make a
great actress of me.”

“I have no doubt they will. I can spare
you for that.”

“It would please you, Ruth?”

“More than you.”

“I don't know. I 'm not so unselfish, —
fame is the flower and fruit of that divine
inner impulsion at whose first stir one desires
it. Yet I like, too, to do honor to our
friendship, Ruth.”

“Ruth,” interrupted Azarian, pausing here
over one of her arabesques, “where did you
get these little winged faces?”

“O, detached studies of Reynolds's cherubs,
you remember, — except — one or two.”

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

“And those?”

“My little cat sat for.”

“Naughty girl! You have never seen any
Angelicos?”

“No.”

“I will take you to-morrow to some glorious
things, — copies, yet delights.”

“You need n't be taken unless you wish,”
whispered Charmian.

“Ah, but I do! Nothing could give me
such pleasure. I have even dreamed about
them. And once — when I was in great
perplexity, you know — I dreamed I was laboring
through an interminable field of stubble,
and two Angels came, with great rosy
half-mooned wings, and lifted me by the shoulders
and bore me swiftly over it all. And
they must have looked precisely like Fra
Angelicos,” said Ruth, her face all lighted.

“You can certify them to-morrow,” he replied,
gazing at her admiringly.

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

“Azarian! Won't you take me too?”

“Well, — you can come,” he answered,
laughing. “Shall you be free at eleven,
Ruth?”

“No, she won't. That is during my rehearsal-hour.”

“Charmian will be through by twelve,
though,” said Ruth timidly.

“Very well, I will call for you then.”
Which accordingly he did.

Charmian went too, as she had threatened,
not for her own enjoyment primarily, but she
had some dim idea of playing dragon. Moreover,
she was accustomed, by a sort of satire,
to keep Ruth's enthusiasms an atom in check.

“They look like so many wooden dolls,”
said she, when Ruth stood rapt. “See their
round polls, — the beady eyes of them! —
their pink cheeks; — just a huddle of dolls.”

“Is that St. John up there? the beautiful
angel in the red gown, with that bright warm

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

hair curling over his shoulders, and his head
bent so lovingly down on the little violin?
I can hear the music! And see that St.
Cecilia, — a blaze of blue in the midst of a
blaze of gold. It is the very ecstasy of worship.”

As Ruth spoke, low-voiced, Azarian, directly
before her, was looking in her face; suddenly
her eye caught his and fell; it was a
moment of double consciousness. Azarian
felt as if he had spoken his thoughts. He
had only wondered why he had not known
it was she when he saw her that first day
in the print-shop as he lounged over Rosa
Bonheur's lithographs, why he had not spoken
to her then, why he had not thought
her pretty then: she had a certain odd and
dainty beauty of her own, those delicate features,
dark eyes, and the one great wave in
her less dark hair; she was quite petite and
perfect; when there was any red in her cheek

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

it was not the blush of the rose, but the
purple pink of the rhodora. And with her
talent, too. He had met no one like her.
What gave her glance that flashing fall just
then? Was she going to care for him, too?
That must n't be. Azarian, somewhat silent
and distraught, went home that day in an
uneasy frame.

As for little Ruth, she feared she had offended
him. She conjectured concerning it
too much for her comfort, and her heart gave
a bound the next day when he tapped and
immediately entered, — for Azarian's impetuosity,
when he allowed it any play, enforced
an entire want of ceremony, and just for the
nonce he was so innocent of self-scrutiny as
to forget consideration of why it was that he
came at all, — for sometimes destiny takes
even our predetermination out of our hand
and weaves another figure, — the fact being
only that he had felt as if he should like to
see her.

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

“Good morning, little Elderberry,” said he.

“Good morning,” said she, rising and taking
his hand. “Come and sit down here
and see if my work is good. Father will be
in directly; he is only walking round the
square.” And she resumed her occupation.
“Why do you call me an elderberry?” she
said at last, as he watched her.

“Why? only that you remind me of one;
of a whole panicle of them rather. They
are so tiny, so shining, so polished and perfect.
The tint is so unique, — your dress suggests
it to-day, black, and deep rich amaranth, —
there is a spark of something like it in your
eyes, and you have the stain of such juice
just now on your cheek; then your lips
are perhaps darker than other lips, like a
black-heart cherry, which has the bitter-sweet
elderberry flavor, too, — if one tastes it, — and
those little pearls when you laugh, as at this
moment, give them yet a wealthier hue. Yes,

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

you are one of the last drops of the earth's
color and pungency distilled back again to
the sunshine, and I 've no doubt that at some
time a bitter-sweet wine, hardly to be told
from old red ripened port, will be expressed
from your nature, strong enough to turn a
man's head.”

“O that will do,” said Miss Yetton, laughing,
and too utterly unaccustomed to the society
of gentlemen to know whether to repulse
this familiarity or not.

“Don't be offended. Remember that I am
a portrait-painter,” —

“Certainly. So I see a thousand reasons
why this picture is my likeness, though you
did n't paint it,” and she brought up from
among her scraps a drawing of the plant in
question.

“There are a thousand more reasons why
this is,” said Azarian, unwrapping a parcel
in his hand, — and he laid before her one of

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

those exquisite little tablets where on a cloud
an Angel strays singing from the Divine presence.

“I have had it a long while. It is like
those you saw yesterday, a copy from Fra
Angelico. See that robe, how it just seems
to be curdled together out of the soft purple
air. What a song the beautiful face is. It
is yours.”

“Mine!” Ruth hesitated, not because she
dreamed of any impropriety in accepting it, —
she had retaken her old childish feeling about
him, — but it seemed to her too valuable.
“No, no,” said she, “it is not mine, but if
you had really as lief, I would like to hang
it on the wall and have it a little while to
look at.”

“Forever. I shall never reclaim it. But
I should prefer you to accept it from me,
Ruth, and to thank me.”

“I do thank you.”

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

“Truly?” with his head resting on his
hand and his arm along the table for a while.
“How came you to know — Charmian?”

“O, she ran up behind me, one day, on the
Common, and she has been very kind to me
ever since. She is the only friend I have, —
except yourself. I like her very much, —
don't you?”

“So, so. She is — I beg your pardon —
just a mite vulgar.”

Poor little Ruth! she had seen so few people
that she did not know how that terrible
word applied itself. Her friend's peculiarities
she had taken to be points of character,
and had never suffered them to offend her.

“Moreover, she is a charmer,” quoted Azarian,
half to himself, “and can almost read
the thoughts of people.”

“I like her, — I love her!” was all Ruth
ventured to say.

“The more 's the pity,” replied the other, —

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

for there lingered, with all his froth of friendliness,
a certain rancor in his soul because
this same Charmian had at an earlier date
seen fit to afford him very decided discouragement,
and as a soothing lotion to his self-regard
he had been obliged to conjure about
her this phantasm of vulgarity, — a woman
of refinement could not have resisted his
power. In very truth, the two were antipathetical,
though he had failed to perceive it
at first; but her coldness had affected merely
his fancy, and to-day Azarian's dislike was
as sincere an emotion as he was capable of
feeling.

“Well, well,” said he, shaking off his cloud,
“have you ever seen her play? I should
think that might cure you. Once or twice?
We 'll make it thrice, and go to-night then.”

“I am much obliged to you. I should have
gone oftener, but you know I do not like to
leave my father.”

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

“Ah, little beggar,” said Azarian gayly,
catching her hands and laughing, “we 'll take
the father too!”

The rose burned in Ruth's cheek, and her
eyes lighted him along his way with joyful
thanks.

Azarian, being well pleased with himself,
repeated the experiment of the play. Too
prominent a personage in his own circle to
enter a local theatre without notice, more
glances than one had been directed at his
companions, — at the frail loveliness of the old
man's face, the silver locks floating round it
from under the little black velvet cap, — at
the quaint picturesqueness of the girl, with a
something alien, a strange element that, just
as you found her beautiful, presented itself
and absorbed the possibility, and, trying to
seize its volatile mystery, escaped beneath your
gaze, — the subtle writing, the braided

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

harmony of feature, the self-involution of genius.
One or two of the players, with all of whom
he was on terms of good-fellowship, came
glancing through the side-scenes, on the first
night, and wondered what little piece Azarian
had picked up now. Opera-glasses were levelled,
bows were interchanged, fair fingers and
glancing fans vainly beckoned, on the next.
Half a dozen of his acquaintance found important
reasons for joining him a moment in the
interludes, to retire and pronounce his friends
to be foreigners, as no introductions had
followed. And when, at the play's conclusion,
they resorted to Vergne's and waited for their
escaloped oysters, the place became thronged
in such a manner as to cause the poor young
maiden at the desk to lose her reckoning
and her wits altogether. This was by no
means offensive to Azarian; he was well accustomed
to pursuit, and to that rather frank
love-making in which the younger damsels of

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

America excel; he had been the recipient of
tri-cornered notes by the mail-ful, of bouquets
with a well-known ring among the flowers,
and had even been waylaid in the halls of
his hotel for a lock of hair, — all which was
beneath contempt; moreover, ladies of grace
and wit and courtesy and piquant reserves
had unbent to him as to no other; he knew
well now that not one of them would leave
their luxurious homes to share his life of possible
struggle, had he ever intended to ask
them, and he took a somewhat malicious
pleasure in exciting their interest anew, and
in baffling the other sex as well with his little
incognita. The delicate titillation applied to
his hidden vanity made him superb. Charmian,
at another table, sat back in her chair
with grim irony, but Azarian shone. He
was sure of dozens of dancing eyes, from the
other seats, from the gallery; he slipped to
Charmian's side and asked her audibly would

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

she not come and see his friends, which she
declined for that time; he had a gay sentence
for every one that passed him, he expended his
skill and tact in keeping them all in the dark.
And meanwhile the old father looked eagerly
on what seemed to him so bright a scene,
musing with dreamy pleasure over the gay
and brilliant world. And in the intoxicating
light, the perfumes of dying flowers, the
plash of the little fountain, drawn to depend
on him through her timidity, Ruth sat unconscious
of the coil, sat under the influence
of Azarian's sweet and subtle smiles, the
object of all his careless grace, beaming back
upon him out of beautiful happy eyes.

Azarian was capable of that air which puts
all questioning to the right-about; he enjoyed
the little mystery among his acquaintance, he
said so to himself, and doubtless thought, indeed,
that was his only reason for meeting
Ruth upon her walks and turning them into

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

longer and more public strolls, where he bent
to her voice devotedly, met her serious upcast
eyes with steady gaze, and inspired in her a
confidence, a reliance, and an association of
himself with purity, integrity, philosophy, and
strength. Not that he had the first intention
of inspiring any such confidence, any such
association; he would have laughed at the
idea, for he knew himself much better than
Ruth did, after all, and often made a note of
his various weaknesses, — indeed, making such
note was one of his strong points. But Miss
Yetton, like many another woman, saw in this
man not what he had, but what she needed, —
and as for him, clear as his sight was, and
shallow as his nature, the one failed to penetrate
the other, — for he thought he amused
himself.

Ruth was still working on the order for
the autumn leaves. Almost every other day
she had gone out into the country, and almost

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

every other day Azarian had gone with her,
now together in the cars, now, since superiority
of strength is one of the surest attractions,
driving her behind a high-stepping
horse that brought his physical powers well
into play, — for her father of late was less
and less inclined to go, and Azarian always
followed up his fancies closely. Sometimes,
indeed, as they went across the Common, a
leaf fluttered into her hand, whose peer no
forest could produce, and towards whose curiously
flecked and painted beauty the whole
ripening year seemed to have converged; but
oftener they went into a maze of woodland,
where the dew-drops still glittered on all the
splendid points of color, where the hills
wrapped themselves far off in blue mist, and
only some giant rose seemed to blossom at
their skirts and seal them from entirely fading
and dissolving into dreams. Together
the two wandered down lanes all aglow with

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

the pendent jewels of the barberry-bushes, as
it were a very Aladdin's garden; they rested
with the light flickering over them through
ruby domes of oak, they stood to watch some
golden beech intensify the sunshine, they
broke down maple-branches with every leaf
dancing on its separate stem like a tongue
of fluttering fire and casting off a flock of
scarlet shadows, they pictured the desert-edge
beneath some beam of sunset when the wild
sumachs tossed their crimson boughs like
palms, they sat down at length under majestic
hemlocks where a wild vine twisted itself
among the knolls as a gorgeously freaked
and freckled snake might do. All the ripe
earth beneath the last touch of the burnishing
sunshine, all the sweet rich air, full of its
mild decay, all the fulfilled expression of
the year, the peace, the pause, breathed only
hope about the one and a soft regret about
the other.

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

“These hemlocks always put me in mind
of some long-forgotten time of innocence and
freshness,” said Azarian. “Perhaps of that
when I first met you, Ruth.”

“Do you remember that time?” asked
Ruth, swinging her leaves, and looking off
into the horizon.

“I have one of those accursed memories that
never lose anything. Probably I can recall a
hundred incidents that you lost the next day.”

Ruth laughed incredulousness.

“How pretty somebody is when she laughs!
Are you happy, Ruth?”

Ruth nodded.

“Let me see. What a little monster I
was then, — but you believed in me, you
thought I was Grand Chevalier of the White
and Black Eagle. Let me see. Somebody
was calling Ruth, were n't they? I can read
that morning off as if it were a page. Don't
you want to hear it?”

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

Ruth nodded again.

“I was a bright-faced boy then, an hour
ago arrived. Somebody told me to keep the
sun in my eyes and I 'd find you. So the
boy started at a run; but the fields were
empty of all save the summer hum of full
July, and by and by his pace slackened, till
at length he stood silently gazing up into the
brilliant sky and unconsciously allowing all
the blithe fresh forenoon influences to touch
him. Suddenly two wide wings, two quivering
lines of shadow, trembled across his vision.
Up went hat and heels in hot pursuit. A
strange thing, with vivid life flashing through
its shining dyes, all barred and mottled in
garnet lights and diamond dust, blown to
that pasture-land on the wind sweeping up
from richer zones, a bubble of rays and
prisms, frail as resplendent. Odd that I
should treasure that butterfly, when men and
women have died and left no sign on my

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

experience! Dancing just beyond, the butterfly
led me to you. But that was the last
thing I thought of. — The boy, always remembering
that the boy means me, made himself
at length, like the small savage he was, a
shoulder-knot of the psyche, the royal colors
yet palpitating through it, but life and radiance
gone. Then, keeping the sun in his face,
he went along towards the brook, negligently
fanning himself with his hat. The path led
him into a grove of rustling young birches,
whose exuberant glee was kept within bounds
by the presence of a commanding hemlock or
two, and here and there overawed by some
martinet of a maple. The sward was still
tenderly damp and starred with faintly-scented
wild-flowers, and suddenly descending, it
opened on the stream that, brawling over
eddies and rocks above, here floated itself
on in tranquil shadow, to brawl again in foam
over eddies and rocks below.”

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

“Yes, I remember.”

“The dew yet drenched the heavy overhanging
branches, the laurel-wreaths lay pale
upon the other bank, the wild-rose breathed
its fragrance through the air; coming from
the interspersed sunshine of the wood, there
was a sweet and serious spell about the cool
noon-darkness here.”

“Ah, yes, — I seem to feel it now.”

“Sitting on a fallen trunk that bridged the
brook, a little girl appeared, her apron full
of all manner of blooms, dipping her bare feet
in and out of the sparkling water, and in a
rapture of silence as some bird in the bough
poured forth his jubilant song. In a minute” —

Ruth turned upon him a smiling rosy
face. “In a minute,” said she, “another
bird seemed to burlesque the same song, the
branches parted and tossed in a shower of
sunshine, and the boy swung himself down to

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

my side. Then he bent low, hat in hand,
and uttered his name: Constant Azarian.”

“Yes, and do you know what you did?
Stay, I 'm telling a story, why do you keep
interrupting? The girl, a quiet unsmiling
child, very, very small, having almost an uncanny
look about her countenance, with its
great preponderating eyes, set in a floating
frame, a nimbus, of bright hair, — it was
bright then, Ruth, it answered brightly when
the sun stroked it, black it lay in the shade, —
the girl, I say, surveyed the apparition a moment;
her clear glance seemed to penetrate
depths in him who depths had none, but
opposed a shallow reflection. That 's the case,
you need n't shake your head, I know it as
well as another.”

“No, no,” said Ruth quickly, “you are
mistaken, if you think so. There are deep
waters in every one's nature. If they are
sealed in the rock and slumber so darkly and

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

stilly that you do not feel them yourself, or
only in indistinct yearning and groping, perhaps
some day the great fact will come that
shall smite the rock and set them flowing.”

“Just as kind a little fancy as if it were
the truth. Ah, I see, tiny artificer, you don't
want to hear what you did. Did you remember
it when we met again not long since,
Ruth?”

Ruth nodded.

“Well, you may apply those pink fingers
to your ears, while I return to our small
people. He seemed at first to be only one
of her dreams, then smiles broke about her
face; here was what the sad little thing had
waited for; she rose quickly and met him
with a loud, warm, childish kiss on either
cheek. The boy laughed. The tears swept
over the girl's eyes. `Come,' said he, in a
sweet coaxing voice that took the edge off
his words, — it 's sweet now, is n't it, Ruth?

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

— `don't you go to crying. Your mother 'll
scold me if she finds it out. I came from
the city, where girls don't do so, you know.
But I like to have you kiss me, first rate.' —
Ruth —? Well, no matter. — That frosted
you. It took me some time to melt the icing.
I remember how I bound your wreath, how I
made the yellow loosestrife burn in your hair,
and crowned your forehead with a wild lily,
and said I should be sure to remember the
azalia because it was like my own name, and
you said it was delicious, and, more timidly,
that my name was too; and when I had
praised you and said that flowers always made
girls pretty, and how I remembered the ladies
at mamma's, shining in their silver wheat
and great moss-roses, you begged to take the
wreath on your arm, where you could look
at it too. You 'd do the same to-day. Upon
which I played the petty tyrant. O, don't deprecate;
it 's all fair enough; I like to

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

tyrannize, you like to be tyrannized. I called you
my queen, my fairy-queen, and then catechised
you. `What makes me a queen?'
said you. `O, because you choose me.'

“`No indeed,' said I, `it 's just the crown.
I 've heard my father say — my father 's a
Greek, — did you know it?'

“`What is it to be a Greek?'

“`What is it to be a Greek! Why, it 's to
be a great poet and a great orator and a
great actor, and to have chariots and horses
and games and beautiful temples and gardens
and statues — O, I forgot to tell you, your
mother wants you to help in the kitchen.
Are n't you hungry? I 've got a hard-bread
in my pocket, — girls don't like hard-bread.
Come, let 's go along.' Ruth, that was I in
epitome, a diamond edition!

“`Should n't you like some honey with your
hard-bread?' asked the little girl. And without
more words she led the way to a hollow

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

tree and showed, through a crevice, deep
down in its heart great cakes of that brown
and golden encrustation of sunshine and perfume
and dew.

“`It 's good for my cough,' said I.

“`I like honey to eat,' said she. `I guess
the angels had it when they went to see Eve
in Eden.'

“`Very likely.'

“`It 's real heavenly food. 'T was St.
John's while he wrote the Revelation. It 's
made out of flowers; it 's the sweet juice of
roses, and of azalias too. Warm rain-storms
and the south winds and all the sunshine
helped to make it, you know.'

“`Yes, — but how are you going to get at
it?'

“`Why, I never do. It 's too precious,' said
she, confessing to a kind of sacrament of
summer. `I just put my finger in there
sometimes. There 's so much, I don't think
the bees mind.'

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

“`Great I care whether they do or not!
Here goes!' and the bark was being pounded
in with a stone, and a swarm of darkness,
of angry seething turbulence, was raging all
about us. Remember? Ah, I see, — your
little lips are burning now.”

“I feel as if I were living those happy days
over again.”

“If you call it happiness to be stung to
death by the bees, I take issue.”

“Thanks to your master in Virgil, we escaped.”

“Finish the story for me, Ruth. Finish
it as you did then.”

“I am afraid my invention is not equal
to yours.”

“Little witch! You accused me of having
saved your life.”

“And so you did.”

“Well, yes, I suppose I did, — as I said
at the time, in a mimic and lordly

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

complaisance. `But what ever made you mention
the honey, I should like to know,' was what
I added then. `You should n't have taken
me right to that tree, you should have known
better,' growing severe as the remembrance
nettled. `One of them 's stung my hand.
Pshaw! I could save a dozen girls' lives!'
replied your hero. But you were not waiting
for his reply. So entirely had you already
invested him with ideal attributes, that, knowing
he would always say the perfect thing,
your complete attention to his real utterance
was unnecessary. You have n't changed a
whit. `O, you saved my life, Constant!'
you cried. `I always shall love you!'”

Suddenly Ruth started to find that her
hand had been in his, — how long she did not
know. And suddenly, somehow, she never
could tell how and Azarian never could tell
why, she found herself drawn and wrapped
in a clasp that checked her pulses, and his

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

voice was murmuring, “Ruth, sweet Ruth,
you told the truth! My own, you do love
me!” And then his kisses closed her lips
in burning silence.

Happy little Ruth, she could scarcely believe
her senses; she felt discovered, and in
her pretty shame was lovelier than ever, and
during those early days had only to spring
and hide her laughing blushes in his arms.
She went home on air, it was not the familiar
earth which they trod, the atmosphere was
some rosy cloud of sunset enfolding them
with radiance, informing them with warmth,
youth and strength and immortality pulsed
along their veins with every throb; it was
the life of another sphere. She sat, that
evening, in the enchanted circle of his breath,
incapable of thought, she lay the innocent
night in a dazzled dream of delight. The
days floated along and bore her with them
upbuoyed on their blissful tide. Ruth

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

wondered at herself, looked curiously at her hand
to think that his kiss had fallen upon it,
glanced of a morning in the little dressing-mirror
with half a reverence for the form he
loved. She asked if it could be true that
this transcendent fate was hers; she had seen
so much sorrow that she fancied such joy was
almost heaven-defying, and, fearing the crash
of some thunderbolt, opposed nothing but humility;
she understood now why certain ancients
poured libations and deprecated the
offices of evil deities and untoward chances.
She had sometimes thought of love, as all
girls will, — perhaps had longed for it, perhaps
had sighed to see the bloom of youth departing
and leaving her without it; and suddenly
the mighty gates had swung aside, and a great
destiny had taken her by the hand and led
her to the edge of heaven. She wondered,
too, what the matchless Azarian had found
in her; she trembled lest there might have

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

been a glamour on his eyes that should dissolve
and let him see only the little threadbare soul
of Ruth Yetton. She desired to enter his
inmost being, and in praying that he might
become one with her she strove to make her
nature ever lovelier that he might suffer no
degradation. She confided to Azarian all these
fears and fancies, he received them as a romance
of which he unexpectedly found himself
the hero, and heard their novel burden
with pure pleasure. He was abandoned to
this happy flight of time, this forgetfulness
of the outer world, not by any choice, but
as it were in spite of himself. He sat just
now like some one dazed by the lights at a
banquet where the future was perpetually
pledged; the cup was in his hand, and all
the years to come will present Azarian nothing
of more virtue than this elixir at which
he only wet his lips.

II.

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

But as Ruth loved, she labored. Here this
strong efflux of her heart swept her out on
its current to a fuller and richer performance;
those autumn-leaves illumined the place; nobody
but Nature and Miss Yetton dared to
use such shades, some one had said.

There they lay, as if the very earth had
dashed her heart's-blood through them, — the
stains of rust and gold, the streaks of sun,
the sign of jostling coteries, the sinuous trail
of the tiny worm traced in tawny tints amidst
the sumptuous dyes, dun here as if wine had
been poured upon them, blazing there in
vermeil ardency, one opaque with a late
greenness full of succulence and studded
with starry sprinkle and spatter of splendor,

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

another dancing on its airy stem a golden
flame transparent as a film of sunshine, — the
tender purple of the pensive ash, the gilded
bronze of beeches, the fine scarlet of the
blackberry-vine, — these separate and delicately
wrought and grained with rare blending of
umber and carmine, damasked with deepening
layer and spilth of color, brinded and barred
and blotted beneath the dripping fingers of
October, nipped by nest-lining bees, suffused
through all their veins with the shining soul
of the mild and mellow season, — those heightened
by swarming shadows of blue and gray
and cast upon the page in a broad ripe flush
and glow as if fresh-bathed in wells of crimson
fire. To slender petiole and node and bud,
they lay there finished and perfect.

“Pretty Patience!” said Azarian, spreading
them about him. “How you sting me!
I complete nothing. But these — do they
not really put a polish on Nature?”

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

“Not unless you put the polish first in
plucking them for me.”

“Made for a courtier. Well, when the
republic is in ruins and I am county of
clouds, one room in our palace shall have
panels of these in great boughs, so that
we may fancy ourselves in sunset at command.”

“`When the republic is in ruins' our dust
will be forgotten, — so you shall have them
now!”

“Not so fast. I for one expect a driver.
I 'm tired of this omnibus where every fool
is pulling the check. There 's a hickory
for you! Little woman, you have a pact and
league with certain tipsy dryads, I 'm sure;
they had such a head of color on when they
told you their secrets that they reeled. Superb.



`That crimson the creeper's leaf across,
Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,
On a shield, else gold from rim to boss.'

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

You 're a witch with a charm at your fingers'
ends.”

“Why have you never completed anything,
Constant?”

“`Still harping on my daughter?' You
want to read me a lecture, do you? Neither
variableness nor shadow of turning. So to
speak, I never did complete anything. The
portraits are nothing. Then there 's my antique, —
it 's a fact in physics, that where the
head can go the rest can follow; so having
cleared the way, I relied on that fact and left
the fellow to shift for himself, — if he wants
to come he can. It 's true in other things
as well; had I never admired your works
with my head, I had never admired you with
my heart, — always allowing that I have one:
where my head went, my heart followed.”

“Yes, dear, but” —

“Well, then, there is one affair finished;
but you 'd laugh at it.”

“I?”

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

“Truly? I will subject it to your sublime
consideration this evening.”

When Azarian had gone, Miss Yetton saw
that her father was busy at his work, — a
series of her painted cards whereof he meant
to make a Jacob's Ladder of flowers and
angels, with which to surprise some one of
the little children whom he met upon his
strolls, but which made progress backward, because,
as Azarian said, when it should be done
he would have to part with it, and the old
gentleman was loath to make renunciation.
Leaving him happily humming over them all,
she went out in search of Charmian.

For many weeks Charmian had been away
with the company that she had mentioned; she
had written to Ruth of her approach, and Ruth
had seen by Azarian's paper that she was at
last announced for that evening. Knowing
that it would be vain to seek her elsewhere, she
bent her way to the theatre, and slipping in

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

past green-room and dressing-rooms, through
all the labyrinthine ways, under the lofty flies,—
astride which Azarian had told her he once
was fond of sitting, so that the opera-strains
rose blended in a perfect strand of unison, —
slipping by juts of scenery where trees grew
out of fireplaces, and among great coils of
ropes and pulleys, cables reaching this way
and that, up and down, all in a kind of yellow
twilight, a hollow sunshine, far aloft, swimming
full of dusty motes, — till, stealing over
one end of the bare stage, she took an empty
chair and watched her chances. Before her
lay the great, silent, black and empty theatre,
beside her moved a throng of tiny people
chattering in an inane and indifferent way
some to the rafters and some to their gloves,
with much flirting and grimacing in the side-scenes
now and then stridently hissed by the
prompter. As Miss Yetton gazed out into
the vast building, along the vacant pit, up

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

the galleries, whose crimson luxury and gilt
and frescoed fronts were all hidden in sombrestretching
draperies, some sense of the drama
of the world suddenly struck her, its tragedy,
its wild comedy like ocean-spray tossing at
the moon, its unities and antitheses, its Fates,
and, being ever a less reflective than sentient
nature, it was more by hit than any good
wit that, as a vague premonition of her own
part therein floated athwart her perception,
she did not rise and rehearse with wringing
hands. But perhaps a little breath saved
her, for between life and emptiness there is
alway set a certain gulf, which, however
feasible it seems, it is from either side impossible
to cross and to return again, and
here the gulf was music,* from which an

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

idle air blew up and scattered her dream, —
for from two or three instruments down there
on the edge of the void there gushed under
its breath a lilting sparkling stream, an airy
capriccio, a wild witch-music, the flutes, with
the deeper wood winding in, the violins dancing
pizzicato, and the three braiding into
harmony at the close, — and, under the magic
wand of the conductor, the wide amphitheatre
seemed slowly to assume the guise of the
glittering night, blossoming out with head
after head beyond, jewels and shining silks
and snowy furs, with creamy shoulders and
beautiful faces lingeringly unfolding like the
petals of a rose, with the great basket of light
up there in the dome pouring down on all
its brimming burden of lustre. Suddenly,
a voice crying, “A pound and a half more
to your thunder!” startled her, the light and
color flashed off and faded, the place was bare
again, the rehearsal was over, and Charmian
was approaching.

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

Charmian looked very stately and pale in
her black silk, with a hood half thrown
back, but her face was beaming as she took
Ruth's chin and tilted her head that she might
look into the eyes, — eyes for a moment timid,
then frank and resolute.

“So, you fancied you had a secret for me,”
said Charmian. “Ah, tell-tale face to betray
the shrinking heart! I should have known
it if I had not met Azarian and walked here
with him an hour ago. And angered him
withal. Are you happy, Ruth? Tell me,
does your heart seem all shivered and dissolved
and floating like motes in a great
beam of joy? Are you truly happy? Well,
then, I am. Kiss and be friends. Dear little
child, you love me yet?”

But Ruth had her arms already about
Charmian's neck, for they were alone, and
was kissing the white throat in a half-hysteric
of confession and assurance.

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

“What an impulsive passionate child it
is!” said the other. “Here is a posy for her,”
giving her the single blossom which she had
been twirling in her hand. “I kept it fresh
all the way. It came from the great government
greenhouses. Look at it, Ruth, so regnant
on its stem. The lady of a Venetian
Magnifico assumed such shape in order to live
on a little longer among her old colors and
splendors, — but it took the torrid belt of this
New World to give it to her.”

“Yes, yes, it is — But I want” —

“No you don't, my dear. I am not going
to hear a word till I can have it all in a nice
cose inside your own room. And then there
is not time; I make a luxury of my enjoyments,
and I am not going to take your story
by bits. Dear Ruth, you think I don't want
to hear? But I am stunned and dazzled, —
why did n't you write? — though I ought to
have expected. I am heartily glad, child, to

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

have you in love, do you know. You won't
think it intrusive? But I would n't give a
groat for those who have not been once
thoroughly steeped in a sincere passion. They
stand on the outside, life has never been
deepened for them, they know nothing of its
arcana, they are cold, they are dull, passing
shadows, unquickened sods. The world has
no meaning for them, they are not beating
humanity, but stocks and stones, their blood
has not been set in tune with all the generations.
Ah, well, — I have a history, too. One
day you shall hear it. A great shadow darkened
my way, — till it was transfigured. I
shall always be simply Charmian. Ah, well.
Why don't you ask your flower's name,
Ruth?”

“Yes, Charmian dear?”

“It is the Queen of August. If you could
see it throned, and all quivering and sparkling
with its court! It would be your first actual

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

sight of one of those plants that the exploring
expedition described as appearing to live with
more than mere vegetable life, to soar to, and
gain, the higher delight of the animal; the
petals — richest, most glowing orange — spring
up erect with such a living joy, Ruth, and in
those wings, and in its bright blue dart, the
whole flower is like a hovering brilliant bird, a
humming-bird perhaps. Is it not? Don't
you feel forcibly and irresistibly its claim to
a rank with those creatures that appreciate
life, even if it be only

`The wild joys of life, — the mere living?'

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

of its crowded wealth freely blossoms in this
single flower. Keep it forever, Ruth, it is your
country's gift to you! There 's the janitor
nodding us out,” and they went down the
ways, still talking, and when they parted it
was because Charmian was going to dine that
day with some grand people. But she could
come to-morrow noon, and Ruth was to tell
her all about it.

Ruth was so glad to have met her friend,
she had so much to say, so much to ask, such
advice to seek; and the sweet confidence and
counsel of a woman are not to be spared even
when a lover is dearest and tenderest, — and a
dim vague feeling, a phantom of pain, already
followed Ruth, a haunting glimmer of thought
that perhaps Azarian was not a very tender
lover, perhaps it was not in his nature. For
love, this great flood, had deepened all the
channels of her being and made her wants
wider. Still he had chosen her, and his way

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

of manifestation ought to be inconsequential,
she half said in her thoughts; so, dismissing
her sole shadow, she tripped lightly along, anticipating
the pleasure of her talk with Charmian,
of pouring on a waiting heart all the
recital of her happiness, anticipating that sympathy
which is balm to the soul excited either
with joy or sorrow, anticipating that to which
she was herself to listen, with a tremor, since
she could not associate Charmian with suffering,
and since she had always seemed to be
one of those people of large intuitions who are
acquainted with every phase of a passion without
its experience, — a thousand at once happy
and sorry ideas occurring which must be repeated, —
she had such a warm little heart,
and was so grateful for this friendship. So
she reached home and went out with her
father in high spirits to their dinner, — never
dreaming how high spirits presage misfortune.

It was in the evening that Azarian came,

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

and, in his lordly style, with a servant following
to deposit a casket and a violin-case by the
door. Azarian was brilliantly handsome that
night, his face overspread with a shining pallor,
his features, cut like those on some old medallion
coin, keener in outline than ever, the
thin lips curved in crimson and showering
mocking smiles, the eyes — blue steel-clad
eyes — sparkling at all they touched, and
along his low straight brow the hair lay in
great flaccid waves of gold drenched with
some penetrating perfume, an Oriental water
that stung the brain to vigor. Never was he
so radiant as on this evening, so various, so
charming, never was there such a seducing
sweetness about his every motion to wile her
soul away, and all the time some reserve
under a control that, though imperial, was
too graceful to be more than half suspected.
Poor little Ruth, — it was something to see
such a being bending all his powers to please

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

her, the love kept bubbling up in her heart
and suffusing soul and body, she was afraid
her face would harden in its breathing blooming
smile. At last Mr. Yetton executed a
long-cherished intention and went to bed,
and when Ruth returned from her good-night
kiss she found Azarian sitting before the fire
and leaning to warm a hand at the blaze,
the violin lying beside him, and the bow trailing
from his other hand. She went and sat
down on the mat at his feet, and was silent
awhile, because too full of quiet happiness.
At length Azarian spoke.

“I saw her, Charmian, to-day!” said he,
with an abrupt anger.

A thousand quick thoughts lanced themselves
through Ruth's brain.

“Well, dear,” said she.

“Being an excellent mouser, she had
guessed our engagement on sight. Some
deity appears to have given her your

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

happiness in charge. She certainly claims a freehold
in you. Perhaps I was never more insulted
than by her daring candor. We had
one sharp thrust of words, we shall have no
more. Do you hear, Ruth?”

“I don't know what you mean!”

“This. If that woman darkens your door
again, I never shall!”

“Darling!”

“I am quite in earnest, dear child” —

“You can't be. Renounce Charmian?”

“Renounce — the subject is not strong
enough to bear such a heavy word.”

“There, I knew you were in jest all the
time. What do you tease your dear child
for? Why, I love Charmian!”

“And you say you love me.”

“I say so!”

“The strongest love must conquer. Mine
or hers. Take your choice, Ruth.”

Ruth could not believe him, it seemed as

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

if her happiness were a fairy thing of ice dissolving
away in tears.

“O Azarian!” she cried, “I cannot do
without her; she is all the friend I have; I
love her!”

“All the friend you have,” he repeated, in
a grieved and quiet voice. “Well, then —
good by.”

He could leave her so! If Ruth had had
the spirit of a mouse! As it was, she just
clung to his hand. Then of a sudden he grew
very kind, he bent, whispering endearments
in her ear, smoothing down her fine disordered
hair, letting cool kisses fall on her
heated forehead, overcoming her with a calm
dignity till she felt like a naughty wilful child.
All at once Ruth stilled her sobbing, the
troubled waters in her heart swelled and
sighed into peace; Azarian was playing on
his violin. A Guarnerius, one of the creations
of that fantastic genius the Giuseppe

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

del Jesu, whose suave rich tone, and delicate
yet penetrating sonority, bend and rebound
beneath the tune; — a treasure among those
brought by his father in that early time when
the man had felt that the independence of his
native land was a thing not worth struggling
for, and, having culled the honey of Europe,
came to these Western shores to pass his
prime. What was there of which Azarian was
not master? Ruth's admiration of his powers
almost equalled her love of himself, — but
just now she thought clearly of nothing of the
kind, only sat wrapped in the mist of music,
for he improvised a singing pastoral of nightfall
when the kye come home. At length the
sound ceased. Ruth did not speak or breathe,
hoping he would retake the burden, and kept
quietly gazing into the fire for the space of
half an hour. Then she turned, and saw
Azarian with his head fallen forward on his
arms, as they lay upon the table, for some

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

reason very tired, and quite asleep. She came
and sat opposite, watching him, watching the
relief of the perfect profile, the lips half-parted
in gentle respiration, watched the drooping
lash, the fine thread of pulse that fluttered
through those purple veins on the beautiful
temple, watched the constraint of the position,
yet the abandon of the sleep in it. A man, the
ruler of the earth, with power to wrest their secrets
from the stars and rend the lightning out
of heaven, is yet so touching when he sleeps,
because so helpless then, utterly defenceless
he reposes in such confidence upon the universe,
the dew on his forehead for sole chrism,
the seal of holy sleep. The very act declares
weakness, so that one would fancy a bad man,
or a proud, ashamed to close his eyes, afraid
moreover of all the demonic phantasms of
that wild moment when the brain hangs between
two worlds, and on the edge of either.
Slumber is such confession; volition has

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

ceased to crowd her secrets down, and the
fixed cold features slowly upheave to the surface,
and float on the tide of the hour! Perhaps
Azarian's dream was not deep enough
for any such surrender of his nature; if it
had been, perhaps Ruth could not have read
it; had she read it, she would still have
loved him, — for once love, and you tear your
flesh and blood away in wringing apart. As
it was, she only guarded a tenderer silence,
and bent yearningly over him, as a mother
yearns in some passionate instant above the
child on her knee. She thought whether or
not it were possible to make this sacrifice
that he demanded, and she saw that in
the extremity of her affection she should
esteem it lightness to lay her very life beneath
his trampling heel. Still some portion
of the sacrifice was Charmian's; and
on Azarian's departure that night, Ruth refused
the promise he would have exacted,

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

telling him laughingly that in the morning he
would blush at himself, and forgive her. But
Azarian shook his head, and, going, paused to
call back from the foot of the black staircase,
above which she held the candle and hung
her pretty face, “Ruth, dear child, I am
perfectly in earnest.”

It was high noon of the next day when a
something queenly tread came up the stairway.
Miss Yetton's door was closed; — the
bare hand knocked. There was a hurried
sound within, and then stillness. Charmian
tapped again, turned the lock, and partly
entered. Ruth stood in the middle of the
floor, just as she had paused, petrified, in
hastening to the door, her face not less white
than the paper in her hand. Charmian's
glance coursed through the room, rested at
Azarian's violin, and at his casket yet unopened,
was caught a moment by a white
gauntlet of his, flung, perhaps by no accident

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

on his part, like a gage on the table there
before her, — then came back to Ruth and
saw the whole.

“Come here, Ruth,” said she cheerily.

Ruth came.

“Things will be straight,” said Charmian
then, “if not in this world, why then in
another! Thank God for that! If ever you
find Azarian's love less worth than mine, come
to me again! For mine will be always waiting
for you.”

She remained so an instant, and Ruth,
trembling, swaying, sank at her feet. Then
she bent, and left in pledge upon Ruth's
shaking hand her ring, whose chrysolite was
flashing like the morning-star.

Concerning that passage Azarian never
asked, — its slender pain should have pricked
his selfishness. Had the foe been an actress
of celebrity, he might have swallowed her
affronts, real and fancied; as it was, he had

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

already confessed to himself that his final
captivation was a foolish affair, and, having
philosophically resolved to make the best of
it, he began by ordaining for his little Ruth
other intimacies. Rank, Azarian assumed to
be his own; impecunious as he might be to-day,
he meant in the golden future to make
wealth his own also; fame belonged to him,
too, in that vista, by the inherent virtue of
his easy powers; and having thus retarded
himself through the results of an impetuous
moment, Azarian boldly asserted that he
had the right to require assistance from his
wife, — that she must put her hand to the
social wheel and mount with him. But life
has its apsides; it is some little hidden stroke
of nature, some sunbeam, some rain-drop,
some frost, that rounds the ripeness; it is,
perhaps, some stir, some jostle, that completes
the lingering crystallization. A trait of the
kaleidoscope belongs to us all, a week's

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

absence from familiar scenes will return one
with the world on another centre, — and since
Charmian's journey and engagement abroad,
Azarian had not seen her play!

That very afternoon Azarian came, and
with him two fine ladies of his acquaintance,
to call upon his little fiancée, — he had wearied
of the incognita ere that time. But under
all their soft voices, their silks and sables,
Ruth missed the great bounding heart of her
friend. After they went, he stayed, on the
edge of dusk, for a tea made gay with all
his endeavor, and then nothing would do but
the three together must sally forth and assist
at a famous farce with Laughter holding both
his sides, to make the fourth. He meant
that Ruth should forget herself in jollity a
moment, whether she would or no. On the
next morning a soft snow-storm fell, and, well
guarded among all its frolicsome myriads of
plumy flakes, Azarian swept her out into the

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

country to catch the daring sprite in the
very act of his wizardry, to see the airy
feathering of spray and tree, the pearly
pencilling of the vine-stem, the waterfall bursting
its way through caves of soft-tufted powdery
crystal, the elms like foamy fountain-sheaves,
the dizzy emptying of the sky, and
all the wild delights of the magic hour, —
till the arch broke up in sunset, and, returning
home past long downy-drifting fields, they
beheld the great flush overlay the dazzling
smoothness with warmth, and beneath the
hillsides of country churchyards looked to
see how Nature seemed to have tucked in
all the graves with this kind coverlid of the
snow! A week of constant devotion, — to
give him all possible credit, Azarian had resolved
that Ruth should not feel the want
of a friend, — at the end of it, he fancied
she could no longer miss the other, his profession
demanded him, and he was tired. He

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

had been very tender, and Ruth had been
very happy; she had shut one gate of her
heart and let the waters there flow back
upon themselves, and because the sacrifice
had been great indeed to her, she was the
more rejoiced, since it had been made for
him. Now, as he turned himself with vigor
to his daily work, she took up hers again,
and was content to miss him in the daytime,
his coming gave such cheeriness to night.

One evening, at last, Azarian brought the
still unopened casket from its corner, before
taking it home with him.

“Well, Eve, my Fatima, have you learned
the contents of this treasury yet?” said he.

“How could I, thou Bluebeard!”

“Yet it retains the relics of a passion.
How indeed? Never trust a woman where
you can trust a key, is an excellent motto.”
And he drew the article in question from
his pocket, threw back the lid, and emptied
the shrine.

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

“My talent in its napkin,” he said as he
held the thing for her inspection.

Carved in ivory with rarest skill, and finished
to the last point of perfection, it was
a vase on whose processional curve forever
circled the line of sanguine beasts, the camelopard
and the lioness, the serpent in his own
volumes intervolved, with old Silenus shaking
his stick of lilies, and the wood-gods in a
crew, with ocean nymphs and hamadryades,
and the rude kings of pastoral Garamant,
bearing honor to that

“Lovely Lady garmented in light,”

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

was the subject Ruth liked best, she was apt
to find him genial. “I shall just set it, with
all its blanched beauty, on the ground outside
the walls of heaven, when I go in!”
said he. “And never till then shall I part
with it, never! I suppose you think, if I
were the lover I should be, it would be a
wedding-present for you then, — the white
witch vase!” he added laughing. “Now sit
down, Ruth, and read the poem to yourself.
It is the Witch of Atlas, you know, that
topmost piece of pure fancy. I wonder no
painter ever got tangled in its themes, — it
needs the color, — there is flame in it, too,
to paint, such blaze of precious gums and
spices as pigment and pencil have never
made! Yet what might not the bare burin
alone do for those


`Panther-peopled forests, whose shade cast
Darkness and odors and a pleasure hid
In melancholy gloom!'

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

And Turner himself need not have disdained
some flashes of the boat's flight, when


`The circling sun-bows did upbear
Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray,
Lighting it far upon its lampless way,'
or where, with richer contrast of shadows, the
billows


`roared to feel
The swift and steady motion of the keel.'
After all, it 's best as it is, with no other illustration
than its own. I 've half the mind
to break my vase! When I first read the
thing, it was like, in its turbulence of fantasticism,
some shattered frieze of the ages, with
half the fragments lost; something of the
antique rose before me, urns and sarcophagi,
and Achilles casting his yellow locks on the
tomb of Patroclus, when the sweet Witch
shook

`The light out of the funeral lamps.'

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

of imagery behind those naked boys charioteering
ghastly alligators,

`By Mœris and the Mareotid lakes.'

And while Ruth read, Azarian played,
played in murmuring minor with his bow
lightly hovering over the strings, and supplied
the verses' only want, in a vague sweet
melancholy.

So the evenings went, music and books and
talk, so blithe and swift that times when the

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

lover failed to appear became a blank of lonesome
longing. Ruth used to reflect in amazement
that she had ever been happy without
Azarian, and in her lowliness as yet exacting
nothing and accepting his least glance as free
and generous largess, she never thought of
reproach, — it was wonderful that he should
come at all, — the times were all the happier
when after any absence he came at last. Not
so with Mr. Yetton. He fretted and wondered
and watched, laid up a shower of sentences,
none of which had he ever the heart to expend,
and could not be induced to forsake his
post till Ruth would lay her weary little head
upon his knee, and let him fold his slender
hands around her with a shadowy feeling that
he somehow stood between her and sorrow.

The Spring was drawing near again. Azarian
was very busy, and had already acquired
no inconsiderable renown by the success of
an operation from which few patients had

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

ever arisen with life. But his hand was tremorless,
his eye was pitiless; he had a keen
delight, as it were, in surprising the Maker at
his secrets; his searching knife was the instrument
of a defiant curiosity; he dared beyond
his duty, and he commanded success. To
those who palpitated beneath the steel, his
very courage was tenderness. There were
some that he had upraised who worshipped
him passing upon his way, as if he had the
strength of a young god, and held the gift
of immortality in his hand. More or less,
murmur of this of course reached Ruth. She
knew that his fortunes prospered, perhaps
she was ever so little touched that he made
no mention of marriage. But Azarian had
not the intention of marrying till his menage
could equal his ideas. Yet, whether or no,
Ruth grew glad in the gladdening season,
because Spring ever sends fresh sap along the
veins of young and healthy natures, and for

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

the first gift of the opening year she painted
the leafing of the lime as we find it on one
of those unexpected mornings when the great
sweet silent power has wrought outward in
the night; the bare bough where the shining
ruby sheaths dispart, that the tiny emeralds
heaped within may tumble out together. She
did not work now so assiduously as she had
been used, for, besides the dissipation of her
thoughts, her father was unable to go on
their country rambles, and she seldom liked
to leave him. Now and then Azarian brought
in a fragrant bunch from the river-side, or left
on his way home an armful of blue lupines,
or else some sabbatia sprays, — those rosy
ghosts that haunt the Plymouth ponds, and,
risen from the edge of deep water among
wading reeds and sedges, seem to belong only
to that one incanting moment of waning afternoon
sunshine, — now and then, but not often,
and she contented herself with weaving her

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

old ideas into arabesque, initial-letter, and
frontispiece, and harvested the sunshine of
the long bright days for her old father's
pleasure, — there grew, as June advanced, to
be a something desert in the sense of them
to Ruth.

Azarian had by this time a new fancy, on
which he spent all his leisure, — a slender
blade-like boat, that ripped up the river with
a gash. In it, or in his wherry, he lay in wait
for morn rising rosy out of the wave, chased
the sunset along the streams at dewfall, and,
shooting down again, lingered far out on the
mysterious margin of midnight to surprise the
solemn rites of the turning tide. After all,
that was the sacred hour; it seemed to him
that such absence and negation were required
for the complete self-assertion of the deep.
He leaned over his boatside, miles away from
any shore, a star looked down from far above,
a star looked up from far below, the glint

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

passed as instantly and left him the sole spirit
between immense concaves of void and fulness,
shut in like the flaw in a diamond. The
sole spirit? What was this vast vague essence
then, overpowering his tiny limitation, and
falling and heaving with long slow surge
about him? By and by, perhaps, the broken
blood-red fragment of a waning moon leaned
up the horizon, and tipped her horns to fill
the giant cup hungrily hollowed to hold the
ruby flood. But now it was all dim and
dusk and dreamy. Above, a wide want, a
hush, an emptiness; beneath, a mystery that
allured and fascinated and terrified, and all
around and up from every side, the great tone,
the muffled murmur, the everlasting fugue
sung by the Sea. An unconscious happy
strain was it, or a choral of rapt worship,
or could a finer sympathy detect a restless
sadness there,


“Infinite passion and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn”?

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

Was he weak? he silently lifted his oars and
stole away: Actæon was no myth to him.
Was he inspired? a sail ran up and lengthened
on the wandering wind; so much was
the talisman for more. With senses known
and named the poets deal, but there are others
too subtile for any statistician to seize, whose
rare quality should be like that of those
volatile liquors which evaporate on contact
with the air; these a floating flower-scent
wakens, a morning breeze just dashed with
dew, the stray sunlight of an autumn afternoon,
a breath of melancholy tune, and these
absorb the sounds of sea at midnight. Azarian
was alone, and brought no simply human
joy or sorrow with him; he made himself akin
to the wild Thing about him; it lay open to
take him, it wrapped him in the silence of
its song, ravelled the earth's webs from his
soul, woke him only with a lull. He had
been in other spheres, he had learned that

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

for which there was neither speech nor language.
But though the deep-bosomed expanses
never meant to reveal to him their
inmost spells, and might spurn him from
aught but their fringes, and though what the
hour showed had not the power of what it
hid, the imagination of this bold seeker defied
them all, and filled every gulf and hollow with
its light; his fancy flew like a bird and hovered
over secret solitudes, and though he found in
fact only what he brought, yet it was alchemized
by all these unformulated agents. For
Azarian was like a prophet who believes in
himself, and has at least one worshipper; he
fortified his faith and fertilized his possible
genius with the tilth of these hours, and accepted
his own service as necessary duty.
Such experiences gave him material, since he
argued that mere emotion is the crude mass,
but, vivified to the intellectual point, it becomes
art, and he that knows the cipher reads
the revelation.

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

“Las flores del romero,
Niña Isabel,
Hoy son flores azules,
Y mañana serán miel,”
he hummed, as he sprang up from the dark
wharves and threaded the lonely echoing
streets without a thought of any soft saddening
eyes that might have watched for him
so long. Yet they who gather their honey
from laurels will eat poison. Azarian was
only sowing the seed of his rosemary.

Perhaps Azarian took no account of the
purely physical pleasure his boat gave him,
though in reality he was elated by the sequestration
in the midst of garish daylight which
it afforded, the speed and prowess were keen
exhilaration; and while nothing on the river
competed with his swift supremacy, — neither
college-craft nor water-barge, and if any dared
the race, he heedlessly skimmed along, pausing
perhaps to feather an oar in solitary

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

disdain, and darting off again in matchless flight,—
there was, withal, the least effervescence of
pride that added a tang to its relish.

In clear noon-snatches when he took himself
to his boat, Azarian loved to peer down
through the yellow limpid harbor-waters and
watch the great anchors lying there blackly
or throwing off a sidelong gleam to flicker
idly upwards; sometimes he stole an hour to
go out and rock on the swell that the vast
steamers left behind them; once his oar tangled
in the tresses of some drowned girl,
he thought, but it proved to be only the
gorgonia, a splendid sea-weed all pulsating
with glow of lakes and madders, which, when
he had carried his boat between the bridge-piers
and away beyond to her moorings, he
took fresh-dripping to Ruth, although, so soon
as it was dried in a pale purple plume, he
reclaimed and donated it to the Natural History
rooms. There was a charm to him, as

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

well, in the flavor of human life that bordered
all the region of tar and cordage, of aerial
spire and dark and crowded hulk, the life
that waited on the whistling winds, — the
ships winging in from foreign lands brought
a passenger they never felt, the bales of merchandise
swinging up from the holds were
rich with a dust of fancy that did not weigh
in the balance. Thus every moment became
a lure, and gradually all Ruth saw of him
was in these broken bits of time, a chance
half-hour at night, a little stroll that ended
for her at the hospital-gate in the morning,
or now and then when he came and went
out with them to dinner. And of late Ruth
used to turn and look after him with a quick
sparkle in her eye, — these long longing days
were not making a saint of her, — and then
go home and cry over her viewless work to
think that she could have been angry an instant
with her dear heart's-delight. When,

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

at last, Azarian ran in one morning, in insolent
spirits, and singing gayly, —


“If you want to go a-fishing,
Do your duty like a man,
Tar the rope and tar the rigging,
Ship! on board the Mary Ann!”
and with a hurried kiss and word was off in
a vacation for a trip to Labrador, Ruth took
a valiant heart, plucked up a little pride,
wished him bon voyage, and tried not to throw
a glance after him. But treading lightly back
upon his steps, he flung open the door and
caught her after all peering through her ivyvines; —
her pretty play of piquant anger
lent her some momentary importance, and he
dallied with a lingering adieu that made her
sad and glad at once.

But now Ruth resumed her old toil with a
will. Previously she had felt little of that
independence which many maidens cherish;
she had indeed laid by and invested a few

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

hundred dollars, and had meant to add to it,
that one day her father might have his long
desire and return to some little house among
fields and hills again; but since her engagement,
this had been a secondary thing; her
father she knew could never leave her, she
earned enough for each day's wants, and,
far from wishing to make provision for the
future, she had preferred reliance on Azarian,
she was glad that he should give her all,
she had desired to owe everything to him, —
but now things were changed. So she worked.
The time had come to her at last, as it comes
to every woman, when she felt herself to be an
integer, and could not brook the treatment
of a cipher. Suddenly one morning she
flung down her pencil; some secret spring,
she felt, was undermining all the fair foundations
of her love; she made a little bonfire
of the things she had done during those
feverish days. Then she turned to her father,

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

and her heart smote her to see how pale and
patient he sat there while she had been absorbed
in her own angry fancy.

A pathetic pain cut her to the quick, as
she contrasted this forlorn wan shadow with
that manly youth of his still within her
recollection. And after that was gone, fond
old memories began to stir in their sleep,
while she gazed on him, — memories sad only
with that pensiveness which clothes the past.
Little home-scenes in the old country-life,
bringing the smile with the sigh: the massacre
of her innocents, fifty babies organized
from transverse rolls of rags and concealed,
under a loose board in the garret floor, from
the invasions of the boy Azarian lately arrived, —
on seeking which hoard one morning,
shrill whoops beneath the window filled her
soul with dismay, and she looked down on
the boy, hatchet in hand, executing a wardance
before a log where lay the fifty, with

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

their little heads completely severed from their
bodies, — and Ruth had wept for her children
and would not be comforted. Then her father
had showed her the securer nest of a
flat rock in the middle of the wheat-field,
and, with her two hands before her, parting,
like a swimmer, the tall waving growth that
arched overhead with a thousand trembles and
curves, and feeling it close up behind her
and leave a trackless path, she went every
summer's day to her retreat, always letting
the walk be slow and stately, with some dim
Biblical association of grandeur, half dreaming
herself to be a Hebrew child in the great
path of the Red Sea or stepping across the
Jordan, behind the shrilling trumpet-strains
and between lofty ramparts of scattering
chrysophrase momently battlemented in dazzling
cresting foam, — till, reaching the flat
white rock, hidden from all but the ardent
sky, she became absorbed in fresh family cares

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

with dolls made from clustering grass-spires
uprooted and inverted, the locks combed out
upon their heads, and their lengths dressed
in store of leaves which she had brought
along, among which if by chance some early-ripened
spray were found with all its colors
kindled by August suns, her little people
rustled about as gorgeously as dames in
Indian cashmeres and silks of Smyrna. But
here, too, Azarian had surprised her. She
remembered placid Sundays, then, when her
father used to take his book, and go out with
her into the woods, and, after he had sung
his hymns, lie back in the grass and let her
play with his eyes, poke about the lids with
her rosy finger-tips, lift the fringes, stare
down into their black wells that always gave
back her tiny reflection, close them and drop
her little kisses there. And with that, she
bethought herself of the real well, balancing
on whose curb one morning and admiring

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

the bright-eyed laughing little girl down there
with the red cheeks and the mouthful of
pearls, she had fallen in herself, carrying in
her plunge the bucket and its chain that
rattled in her ears like thunder; and just
as, faint with horror and cold, her cries had
ceased, and over her the sky had seemed to
darken and send out its stars, a great bright
face, an Angel's face, interposed between her
and the deepening heaven, and with his feet
striking from stone to stone of the greenly-streaked
and slippery shaft, and steadied by
his hand along the chain, her father had
dashed down and swept her up, as it seemed,
in a breath, and tumbled her out into the
warm noon light and upon the fresh and
fragrant heaps of hay. And then, with recurrence
of the chill, she thought of the
broad hearth at home, the blaze in the vast
chimney, that, summer or winter, never died,
but sent the light of its flashes to dance over

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

dresser and wall, painting a hundred ruddy
pictures in the bright pewter hanging there,
and she remembered how her father had told
her the tradition that from a fire never once
going out in seven years the little salamander
sprang, and sitting before it there with him
night after night, in every puff of smoke
that rolled upward faintly blue, in every fall
of embers that trembled apart into white ash
and glowing coal, in every ooze and simmer
of the singing log, in every snapping knot,
she had looked for the ruby outline, had
feared the sparkling eyes, had listened for
the voice of the mysterious being born of
fire and dwelling in its hot and terribly
beautiful recesses. At such times, too, her
father had sung her strange ballads, barbarous
things, but with a sweetness like that of wild-honey
in their tunes, — Fair Rosamond, —
the lay of where the ships go sailing, — a Revolutionary
air whose quaint melody charmed

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

her not half so much as the dramatic justice
subsisting between two of its stanzas, running
in this wise: —

Ruth reflected, too, with what a keen adventurous
relish he had used to peal forth
old hunting-refrains, or the burden of some
wild sea-song.


“The stars shine bright, and the moon gives light,
And my mother 'll be looking for me.

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

She may look, she may cry, with a watery eye,
She must look to the bottom of the sea,
The sea! The sea!
She must look to the bottom of the sea.
And the raging seas did roar,
And the stormy winds did blow,
While we poor sailors climbing up atop,
And the land-lubbers lying down below, below, below,
And the land-lubbers lying down below!”
And then she had crept into his waiting arms
and been lulled to sleep by the sad strain of


“Weep no more, lady,
Thy sorrows are in vain;
For violets plucked, the sweetest showers
Will ne'er make grow again,” —
all in those dear dead days when her father
had completed her whole horizon. But ah!
how different now, — how her reliance had
turned into support, and how poorly indeed
she was giving back to-day the wealth of comfort
and delight with which he once enriched

[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]

her, when he had it to bestow! He sat there
so old and melancholy and feeble, she recalled
him so hale and buoyant and young, — the
tears fell down her face.

There was a bright glance in Mr. Yetton's
eye just then, to which it had long been unaccustomed;
he was bending forward, and
gazing about him with a bewildered air. Ruth
went and slowly brushed her cheek across his
brow.

“Dear,” said he quickly, with almost a
vigor in his tone, drawing her away and holding
her to look at, while his mind travelled
back one phase, “things are very strange.
Where is Charmian?”

Ruth burst into tears outright.

“Don't, my dear,” said her father regretfully,
forgetting his question, and still travelling
back. “I seem,” said he, pressing his
hand against his eyes, “to have been in a
dream. Things are very strange. Ruth, my

[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]

love, tell me all about it, all that has happened
since, — since we came here, for instance.”

Was it possible that that old intelligence
was returning? that the passivity, the trance,
would pass, and her father be again the strong,
bright man of plans and hopes, such as once
he was when with stalwart form and nervous
limb he carried his child along the fields,
leaping the brooks, and snapping off broad
branches for her parasol, — so much do we
connect mental with bodily vigor! Ruth's
trembling hope burned in her cheeks and
dried her tears like fire. She sat on the arm
of his chair, and repeated the little story with
a caress for every period. She told him of
her work, of her happiness, of her love, even
of that day when first Azarian had claimed
her favor; but she breathed nothing of neglect,
of selfish pleasure, of tears, or of repining.
For though Ruth might feel, she would not
as yet reflect. Yet perhaps that which she

[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

did not say her father's awakening power
divined.

“But you have spoken no word of Charmian,”
said he, his own remembrance all alit.

“Charmian does not come here any more.”

“— Ah, child! I see it all, I see it all.
And yet her love was best!”

Ruth shivered at the thought. Had her
father woke simply to tell her this? She
could not believe it, though one came back
from the dead.

“And where did you say Azarian was? I
must see him first, I must tell him to be
tender of my child before I go.”

“Go where, dear father?” asked Ruth,
with a hasty pang, bringing in her glance
from the evening-star that glimmered through
a long wreath of roseate vapor. “You are
not going anywhere? You will not leave
me?”

“Yes, dear, for a little while. Only a little

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

while. — You spoke of the money saved,
and said it was for me, my love, — you don't
regret?”

Ruth laughed, — though something made
it hurt her, — all that was so entirely his.

“Not but that I shall repay the sum, a
thousand fold, a thousand fold, my dear!
You shall ride in your carriage, your path
to it shall be carpeted with cloth of gold.
Nobody's affection will toss you off when you
have the soft lap of wealth to fall into. Money
is the measure of the world, to it wit, genius,
power, fame, all are transferable; a man's
possession of it is the gauge of his real worth.
Yes, yes, Ruth, your name shall yet weigh
down a million!”

“Dear, dear father, we are so much happier
as we are! Be still, dear; put your head on
my shoulder and let me sing to you your old
tunes.”

“Yes, Ruth. I am going away for a little

[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]

while, — to that bright country men talked
of when I fell ill, where, as they say, the
streets are paved with gold and precious-stones.”
But there a news-boy cried in the
square, —seldom thing, — and he sent her for
a paper.

Ruth obeyed, only that she dared not
thwart him; and, re-entering, unfolded the
sheet, seeking for the place he wished. As
she did so, holding the paper to the late light,
an announcement caught her eye and sent the
color up and down her face, an announcement
concerning the stock in which, by Azarian's
advice, all her little investment had been
made.

“Dear father,” said she, “it is getting
so dark” —

“What time do they sail, Ruth? Here,
give me the paper!”

“The first and twentieth, I” —

“And what day is this?”

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

“The thirty-first, — but” —

“To-morrow! I shall no more than reach
the boat if I take the night train. You must
draw the money at once, Ruth!”

“It is,” said she, with hesitation, “after
business-hours.”

“Never mind, I can easily negotiate your
certificates; give them to me now, my love,
and throw some things together in my portmanteau.
Call a coach. It is all for you,
sweet, all for you. Little one, my pretty one,
when I come home I will hang a diamond
on your forehead that shall blaze like that
star up there in Heaven!”

He lifted his tall and slender frame, quivering
in excitement, looking forward, and reckoning
rapidly his dazzling dreams. What
should she do?

“Dear father,” she said, reaching up to
wind her arms about his shoulder, “remember
how happy we have been. We do not need

[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]

anything more. If we did, Azarian would
give it to us. Remember — when I tell you
something — that we have peace and praise
and plenty.”

“When you tell me what?” turning his
face sharply upon her.

“Something I saw just now in the paper, —
about where our money was. The place has
failed. there is n't any money there. But
we shall never” —

There was no need to continue; the weight
upon her arm was growing heavier, the tall
and slender frame sank back into the chair, —
Mr. Yetton's heart was broken. He spoke
no more, but kissed his child with a gasping
sob, and, drifting through the night, was lost,
when morning came, in eternity. Still there,
but beyond her sight.

Poor little Ruth did not know how to be
calm; long trial had abused her strength, all

[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]

her power of repression was gone, all her
sorrow fell upon her at once. She lay with
her face where his heart had been wont to
beat, as if she would warm it into life again
with her kisses and her wild bursts of weeping.
She called to him, as if she could not
speak and he refuse to hear, and, every time,
the white mute awfulness struck like cold
steel to her soul. He must stir, must smile;
it was impossible, she cried out, that he would
not turn and look in her eyes; when a little
breeze blew in and lifted the fine gray hair
from his brow, she thought to feel his breath
upon her cheek, — but there was only the
marble silence, the impassible repose. To
her hand, there was nothing but chill; to
her entreaties, the flinty outline sealed in frost,
the impress of unchangeable Fate. A wail of
despair left her lips as she shuddered down
beside him again. It seemed to her that this
was all she had, and this was gone. Three

[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]

noons, three nights, then the green sods covered
him and she was alone at last.

They were dark days that followed, life
seemed too heavy to bear. She remembered
how she had driven with Azarian in the wintry
sunset and seen the snow upon the graves,
she thought with an agony of pity of the
bleak lonely winds blowing over them, of
the cruel sleet that would so soon beat above
the dear old form. She would cheat herself
into believing him in his chair, and, turning,
find it vacant, and bury her face there as if
it were his loving breast again. She would
never feel those slender hands about her neck
any more, she would never hear that voice,
never look in that pathetic face; she had not
made his life so happy as she might, and
now she could never do another thing for
him, — never, — and with the terrible word
her soul dashed up against the immutable
boundaries. She was so cold, so bruised,

[figure description] Page 126.[end figure description]

so lonely, — some human help and love she
wanted, some touch, — where were Azarian's
arms? If he could only feel her sorrow, he
might care for her as once, hold her in the
old way, comfort her. A bitter instinct told
her that, with all his skill, he should have
known this might come at any time, and not
have left her to meet its force alone, to struggle
with its succeeding horror, to let Death
drop the folds of his mighty pall upon her
and shut out the light of the world. She
remembered those recent vigils, remembered
them in the midst of her grief, with a terror
that she had not felt in enduring them, —
that icy sculptured fixity beneath all the gusty
sway of snowy drapery in the wind from the
open casement. Lying there alone, utterly
weak and unnerved in the long blackness of
the moonless nights, she felt as if the fearful
work, when the face indurates beneath the
stony palm while the soul is drawn away,

[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]

were being done on her; all manner of ghastly
fancies oppressed her brain, a weight like
cold lead within beat out her pulse slowly,
the tears brimmed and overflowed, a ceaseless
sourceless rain; to her ken there was no life,
no immortality, no power in the wide universe
but death, and death was immitigable
horror. There had always been for Ruth a
degree of uncertain awe about the dark, as
of something unknown, unformed, incomprehensible,
incommensurate. She had never felt
its spiritual analogy till now, now when it
brought with it the bitter need of some almighty
stay, and just as reason might have
yielded to the shadows encompassing both
soul and body, out of their heart came help,
and she found this darkness of the grave
brooding thick with mercies. The little bird
that fluttered from the night-storm through
the Northumbrian king's banqueting-hall,
while the firelight bickered in the purple

[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]

bowls of wine and flung his shadow at the
shields upon the wall, flew from the warmth
and light and cheer out at the other door,

“Into the darkness awful and divine.”

Sometimes now she stole abroad, when the
evening came, and into a church at hand,
where she heard the organ pealing, — a silent
worshipper came in, a silent one went out,
a penitent knelt motionless at the altar, another
at the confessional; one burner shed
a peaceful twilight over lofty arch and clustered
column, dying dimly down the aisles
and in the recesses of the chancel; a solemn

[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]

quiet reigned below, — and above, the voices
of the practising choir soared in ecstatic music
along the organ's golden blare. And Ruth
stood there in the obscurity with folded hands
and pale face, looking up the dark vaulted
roof, and tried to raise her soul into sympathy
with the place, to make it fit for heavenly
love, — tried to find God in his world, — the
God who had given her peace. She knew
in herself that the vast Spirit which feeds the
universe is beneficent as powerful; she dared
to trust in the force that wound the stars
upon their courses and shaped the petals of
the flower; the care that surrounded insect
and root would not be less kind to her. All
things were best, she said, whether she ceased
upon the idle air and was not, or whether
she drew nearer the infinite depths of love,
a pure existence mounting on endless æons.
She felt how one had drawn her out of deep
waters; thankfully she loved him, desired to

[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]

find him, to worship him, and lay her tribute
at his feet. Her fears had fled away, and
though the sight of some worn garment
would bring the hungry heart to her lips,
and some memory cause the trembling tears
to fall, her very grief was purified. It had
brought her towards a world she had never
known, — already, to her hopes, the heavenly
door flew open at a touch, and angels drew
her in.

As the days crept by now, Ruth began to
long for Azarian's return, with fresh eagerness;
she needed his presence so much, his
sympathy, his solace; she wished to impart to
him this new experience, this glorious anticipation
and confidence, to learn if any other
human being had ever felt the same. However,
he was not to come till September, so
she schooled her heart to patience. But one
morning that heart kept stirring with such a

[figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]

wild insistance, that she felt as if he must be
near, yet could not believe it to be anything
but a dream, when the door opened and a
face laughed in upon her, Azarian's face,
though somewhat browned, a trifle ruddy, the
thoroughly healthy work of sun and wind.
So she sat there a moment, changed and pale
in her little black gown, and gazing up at
him with her always darkly mournful eyes,
eyes as full of pathos as those of some dumb
thing, which seem to express the sorrow of a
silent soul, — then she sprang and cried upon
his arm.

The reception hardly accorded with Azarian's
desires, — especially as behind him there
brushed a rustle of silk. He saw at once
that it had been an error not to come first
alone; but he made the best of it, brought
Ruth to herself with a word, and presented
her to Madame Saratov, a Russian lady who
had known his father, and whom he had

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

accidentally found upon the Arabia when, heartily
tired of the fishing-smack and its discomforts,
he had made his way to Halifax and caught
the steamer.

Madame Saratov was perhaps Azarian's age
once and a half again; but in her fair hair
that betrayed no change, her complexion like
snow over which a rosy vapor drifts, and all
her patrician preservation, she gave no sign of
years. For the rest, she was beautiful, —
beautiful to Ruth as a mother might have
been, with a bland beatific countenance, —
beautiful to Azarian as, if he had not been
overcome against his will by another, he would
have chosen a lady-love to be, with a captivating
charm of manner, with a voice that
played freely in a range of dulcet tones and
discords, with a sparkle of wicked wit and
mischievous meanings here, with a strain of
mystical piety there, with a character whose
solution presented to him analytic pleasure.

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

Madame Saratov was a woman, in fact, like
a faceted jewel; and if she was not all things
to all men, she was certainly capable of being
a great many things to one man. Having
accompanied her husband in exile until his
death, her present purpose was to give lessons
in French, in music, in her own language,
in anything, and her ultimate object the education
of her two boys, whom she had dismissed
to school, having brought them to
America for a career. Nothing was more
pleasing to Azarian than, for the while, to
consider Madame Saratov as his protégée, to
put high price on her services and barriers
about her acquaintance, to make her the
fashion, and, in his own way, to take advantage
of his position. Miss Yetton of course
was to be a pupil, — poor Ruth, who was an
ignorant little body and had small knowledge
or expression beyond her pretty art, — and
therefore he had gayly brought them together

[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]

without ceremony. Madame Saratov's tact
was, however, superior to the situation, and
in a few minutes she made her appointment,
and, going, gave the thin hand so warm and
full a pressure that Ruth felt with a thrill
how precious some womanly companionship
might be if Azarian would allow it.

Azarian returned in the evening, and was
so genial and tender as to make Ruth absolutely
cheerful. He expressed much concern
about her loss, though none that he had been
absent, uttering now and then some dark diagnostic
word; and when his manner of listening
became slightly, ever so slightly, indifferent,
she fancied he thought it injurious for her
to brood over the subject, and hastened to
reassure him, and tell her inner half-confirmed
joy, and all its source. But at the onset
Azarian gave a great shrug, got up and walked
across the room, and, taking his violin, began
to tune it.

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“Pur!” he exclaimed, “the cat is gray!”

However, in a minute he laid down the
instrument without playing, and was by her
side again. But this was all the life Ruth
had lived of late, and she had nothing else
to tell.

“Oh, I wish you understood it,” said she
in her disappointment. “I wish I knew how
to talk and make it seem real to you!”

“Little Whimsy, it is just as real to me
now as ever I want it to be. If you 're going
to be a nun, why you may take the veil.
Oh — the cold shoulder!”

But, with a pretty light in her eye, Ruth
had to laugh back at him across the offending
member, — he had resigned himself to it so
composedly among the cushions.

“No,” said she, — “only if you would care
a little, the least little, about such things.”

“What! The new love is the cuckoo to
turn the old out of the nest?”

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“O Azarian!”

“Now, Ruth, don't try that fashion. Try
forever and you can't make yourself more
charming to me than you were when I first
knew you.”

“Than I was?” with a shy archness.

“There! Than you are! So don't affect
airs nor put on this little mask for the sake of
being interesting. You were n't brought up
in it, you have n't a moonstone rosary blessed
by the Pope or the Patriarch, as Madame Saratov
has, you have n't an ivory and ebony
crucifix mounted on jewels; and I advise
you, if you want to preserve my affection, to
remain rational, for, frankly, you could n't
bore me more than by playing the Guyon,
for which Nature never intended you!”

Years afterward, Azarian used to see the
mournful glance of those dark eyes rising
like a spectre in his wine-glass in the ashes,
behind the empty window-pane when the night

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had fallen. Here it only impressed him as
something quite exquisite, and he reached his
hand for hers. Ruth gave him her hand, and
in a minute she replied.

“I am sorry that you misunderstand me
so, because I am afraid that you will not love
me long if you think I could counterfeit such
a solemn thing even in order to interest you.”

“I don't think you could counterfeit anything.
Now come kiss me, and let it all
pass.”

“But, Azarian dear, I should think you
would like to have my confidence.”

“Not when it 's silly. I don't want to be
made a fool of. Give me my violin, Ruth,
an' thou lovest me. Now the Tourterelle.
And you shall have a Fantasie Glaciale!”
And under his strains, that shaped themselves
with a kind of weird crispness, Ruth's fancy
suffered her to see the icebergs building their
glittering architecture of frosty peaks and

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pinnacles up the blue vault, till suddenly all
was grotesquely ended by the interpolation of
a little phrase in another measure, a pair of
chasing scales, that brought everything up
standing with a twang. Azarian laughed with
his white teeth.

“That was two little cubs tumbling down
after the mother,” said he, “who snapped her
jaws at me. Strictly pictorial music, good
for the critics. Now, to farewells.”

III.

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Since Azarian was at home again, Ruth
forgot all the weary watching of June and
prepared herself to be happy. Certain hours
of the day she worked with her paints, and
worked for money too, as all she had was
gone; later, she fagged over her books, for she
feared, of all things, by her stupidity to do
discredit to Azarian's choice before the Russian
lady. Then in the long summer evenings
she sat with happy fancies, if she had them,
alone, if she had them not, for, to spare both
her eyes and her candles, she lit to light unless
thought and solitude became insupportable;
and she had said to herself that she had
been very selfish, and that with all his social
claims she had no right to expect Azarian on

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more than two evenings in the week, and had
told him so. However, Azarian ran in when
he pleased, reported any piece of news, admired
her work, said she was getting a color,
played some air on his violin, said he kissed
her hands. Or, on the contrary, if she
were not there, he left some little imp sitting
astride her delicately-drawn grass-spires, or
ringing the chime out of the fairy bells of her
Linnæa, or he turned her painted snowdrop
into a plump wasp bleached for bridal, — as a
card; after which, of course, such things —
when found with a little pang of regret at her
absence, and well paid for by the loss of the
next day's airing — were too precious to part
with, if they had not, moreover, been spoiled.
That made small odds though, for, famous as
they had become, Ruth could not dispose of
half she did; — the year had been a disastrous
one, the summer was very slow, a financial
flurry was impending, and nobody had the
price to waste on kickshaws.

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But it somehow happened that Azarian did
not always come on those two evenings appointed; —
either Madame Saratov had some
fine circle, or it was the club, or the old seductions
of the boat were uppermost again.
Ruth, who had grown to count upon them at
least, and who sometimes felt as if she required
his presence so much that she must go out
and seek him, waited till the clock struck
midnight, in hopes of just a brief moment as
he passed, yet waited in vain. Strange apprehensions
beset her too, as she fancied him on
the water at such times, fancied the keel of
some plunging ship crushing down his little
cockleshell of a boat in the dark, or when the
thunder-storms had been rolling and rattling
over the city, or when sudden flaws of wind
came down and wildly rustled all the trees
upon the square and sent the dust to heaven.
Once, indeed, having some special promise that
she could not dream of his breaking, and her

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imagination all athrob and fevered with fear,
she caught a scarf or shawl and ran out into
the black hot night, meaning to make the
water's edge; when suddenly, under the shine
of a street-lamp, she fell upon him sauntering
along. And then, to prevent any such second
interference, Azarian punishingly declined to
enter, and left her at the door. But here this
state of feeling wrought an unconscious attraction;
her sadness was so great at his voluntary
delays over greater pleasure found with
others, her expectation so strained and eager,
that, when he did come, her spirits mounted to
such a pitch of airy volatile gayety, forever
rounded by the least shadowy refrain of the
preceding hour, that her presence became an
enchantment; he watched their wavering as
one watches a flame flickering in the wind,
and not till he had discovered their secret was
the fascination lost.

Ruth's lessons at this time were a great

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blessing; she left thought in them, and was
hindered from reflecting upon how slight and
loose a thing this love of Azarian's was. As
he had foreseen, the Baroness Saratov became
an object of far more interest than her position
warranted, through the well-known weakness
of many people; a teacher, every one
desired to avail themselves of her services; a
lady, every one aspired to her intimacy. She
rented one floor of a small house. Her rooms
were as cosey as any nest, and yet made elegant
with countless trifles which had cost her
less than nothing. To-day under her spell,
a painting, with its palm-tree and pool and
gorgeous sky, was hung there by a young
artist who just began to dip his brush in
wells of tropic color; to-morrow a pupil who
wished to do her pleasure begged acceptance
of an album of the photographs of precious
places in Europe; yesterday a publisher had
presented her with his choicest volumes; she

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had nothing to do but dispose them. That
little gem, where one long ripple of green
water broke on a curving beach, Marine had
sent her, when after her extravagant admiration
it yet found no purchaser; that bust
Carrara had given in Rome, fresh from his
chisel, — she had procured him a commission.
An open pianoforte here, a half-veiled easel
there, the single blossom of some rare exotic
daily renewed in a snowy vase-stem, all conspired
to produce dainty effect; and throughout,
there was a stroke, an art, a sense of
something foreign, that completed the charm,
whether it were in the flask of delicate perfume
forever exhaling to the air; the quaint
ornaments, — a demoiselle-fly in such brilliantly
enamelled metal that the sardonyx, the
smaragdite, the sapphire, seemed to sheathe
its mail, its wings so fine and airy ever hovering
on the point of flight, yet with gravity
sufficient for a paper-weight; a little basket

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of snowy lightness cut from the fig-pith and
filled with grasses, wheat-ears, thorns, and
leaves, of the same dazzlingly delicate fibre,
and looking all like one exquisite petrifaction,
for allumettes; for timepiece a tiny clepsydra,
dug from an ancient ruin, thousands of
years ago measuring the inspirations of the
oracle, the winning moment of the lampad,
the passionate greeting and parting of lovers
long since dust, the smile of Rhodope perhaps,
perhaps the vagrant song of Homer; —
the folding-screen of rosy damask; or the occupancy.
Madame Saratov was the creature of
luxury, she demanded, and therefore had, the
best of everything. A faithful maid haunted
her steps; her chosen raiment was silks and
velvets; she suffered from unpleasant dreams
if the coverlet were less than satin; she was
always soft and white and cool; her hands
were still as beautiful as that model of them
that peered from behind the droop of the

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curtain; she had kept her jewels through every
reverse, and the very thimble with which she
stitched the vine upon her cambric was thick
crusted at the base with pearls. She had not
been in town two months before she was on
more familiar terms with every notable person
than were those who had known them all
their days; the politician came to her with
his schemes and benefited by her tact; the
star requested her reading of some passage,
her tradition of some gesture, her idea of
some point; the preacher talked with her,
and in her vein of rapt pietic ecstasy almost
expected to see her translated before his eyes,
and dropped his blessing on her bended head;
and in the warm shadows of her room, breathing
the subtile odors, and sipping perhaps,
betweenwhiles, draughts of some richly-rosy
perfumed cordial, the poet read his verses,
and went away intoxicated with them, with
her, and with himself. It was especially

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pleasant to Azarian to come and go, among all
these more deferential, as autocratically as he
pleased. She had a trick, too, of surprising
her late-lingering company with little suppers,
ravishing revels, when from tiny engraven
bubbles of glass she drank to the health of
her charming guests, in maraschino; there
was a flavor in the unknown dishes that made
it possible to believe one ate the famous tart
of pomegranates; and if the feast consisted
of nothing but sliced oranges, they lay under
their crystals of sugar in plates whose ruby
whorls or azure banqueted the eye. There
was a silent kinship of race between Azarian
and Madame Saratov; in her he found that
certain genial dash of foreign things which
inheritance made delicious to his nature. In
all her style, too, there was a saucy disregard
of any future day of reckoning, a thing that
suited him as well. These little suppers
absorbed many an evening that by right

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belonged to Ruth. It amused him, then,
sometimes to accompany Ruth at her recitations,
to contrast the two, to play them off,
Madame Saratov humoring him, the other
shrinking into herself; and if he chose to
stay the hour, of course poor little Ruth, under
his presence, made a very dunce of herself,
though preferring even such display and
pain, so seldom of late did she see him at
all. Spiritless girl, not to throw him off, and
when the pique was past weep lifelong solitary
tears or else harden her heart to stone!
But Ruth had not thought of that yet, so she
endured his demure scoffs and laughed up at
him beseechingly when the failure was egregious.
Stepping into Madame Saratov's salon
was, to Ruth, like an emigration to a distant
country; she could scarcely blame her lover
for delaying where it was in fact so delightful
to herself; she coveted a fragment only of the
other's versatility, but she saw plainly that

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the foreign lady was not the friend her sore
heart needed. Yet Madame Saratov liked
Ruth, she was so fresh and simple; it was
holding a wild-flower in her hand; she took
pains to draw her out of herself, she refused
others that Ruth might dally with her awhile,
she helped her by severe criticism and glad
praise, and she began to puzzle herself in
wonderment over her engagement to so selfish
and graceless a scamp as Azarian. She
had serious thoughts of sprinkling a shower
of water-drops in her face, so if possible to
break the bewitchment. Azarian did well
enough as her own courtier; she allowed him
certain freedom there because he was so admirable;
but she told him one day, with a
laugh, that he reminded her of those vampires
who grew fat sucking the heart's-juices
of young maidens. Azarian drew the black
brows together in a line over the icy paleblue
brilliancy of his lustrous eyes, lightened

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once, and said no more. Neither did Madame
Saratov.

Ruth used sometimes to wonder now in the
October mornings, as she faced the glass, if
Azarian cared less for her because she was
not so pretty as once, — for Ruth had always
liked her looks, in her own way, — she was
so very thin and pale, and had such shadows
under her lashes, and her cheeks beginning
to seem as though she were no longer young.
Azarian did not know what companion came
and sat daily at her elbow in his absences,
making her brain clearer, her ideas purer,
her tints more vivid, but taking slowly in return
the tone from life,

“Spare Fast that oft with Gods doth diet,”

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the grief, the determination against murmuring,
even to herself, so inward as to be unknown, —
all had their effect on health, and
depression was settling upon her anew, that
it needed but a touch to fix. She feared she
was going to die and leave him; and because,
when truth is plainest and denies,
hope often is most buoyant and, knocking at
heaven's gate, demands, she still trusted that
a day would come when all his old desire
of her would renew itself, and by unspoken
intuitions she recognized his need of her saving
grace at last, and felt her capability of bestowing
it. Nobody else will ever love him as
I do, Ruth thought; I was put here to serve
him; if I should leave him, there would be
no other one; when he comes to die, he will
want — O so longingly! — a breast to lean
upon. Perhaps behind that there was the
glimmering thought that a home and its dear
ties and sacrifices would yet soften him, and

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give him all that he had not; though, consciously,
she would not acknowledge in her
most secret soul that he was not already
perfection. But the very fear, the dread of
forsaking him so, leaving him loveless in the
world, forbade her indignation to usurp her
passion, and only made her tenderer.

But here, one day, Azarian commented on
her looks, and told her she must cease her
lessons. Then he took up his Guarnerius,
and scraped a great yawn across the strings.

“What a sleepy!” said Ruth, lightly.
“One would think you sat up last night till
the clock struck eleven, for somebody.”

“Nobody's fault but her own. If somebody
's not here by nine, he 's not coming
at all,” and he caressed the instrument beneath
his chin; for he loved its beauty of
outline, its supple sides, its royal varnish,
and its sounding soul. “Ruth, have you
been playing on my fiddle?”

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