University of Virginia Library

2. II.

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,

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?”

“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.

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?”

“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

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
the galleries, whose crimson luxury and gilt
and frescoed fronts were all hidden in sombre-stretching
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,[1] from which an
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.

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.

“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

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

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
But that's not the power of the thing, after
all. It is this. Think of your country, Ruth,
all your great, beautiful, beloved country, its
wide savannas, its rushing rivers, its pastures
and prairies, its mighty mountains, from tropical
water to ice-bound coast peopled and peaceful
and proud, and then think that the whole
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

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,

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
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 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

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

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
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
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,
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

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

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 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

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
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.

“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

who, sealed amidst a snowy chaos of broidered
flower and vine, lay ever keeping
Azarian looked at it lovingly as Ruth did.
Often languid on other subjects, he was
always enthusiastic upon himself, and as that
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
And Turner himself need not have disdained
some flashes of the boat's flight, when
or where, with richer contrast of shadows, the
billows
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
Egypt came with all her grotesque awfulness
of imagery behind those naked boys charioteering
ghastly alligators,
And it was one of the Wild Ladies of medi
æval legends themselves, when, chasing the
lightning,
I like it because it has scarcely a human
sympathy, because its region is so remote, the
very shoreless air
There 's the place!”

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

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

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
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
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

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,
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
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.
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 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

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,
at last, Azarian ran in one morning, in insolent
spirits, and singing gayly, —
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 ivy-vines;
— 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

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,
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 war-dance
before a log where lay the fifty, with

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
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
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
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
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.

And then she had crept into his waiting arms
and been lulled to sleep by the sad strain of
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
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

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

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

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

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?”

“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

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

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
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,

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,
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
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,
Divine, instinct with possible deity, for it is
written He made darkness his secret place.
And so when the terrors of hell had got hold
upon her, Ruth turned and prayed, and at her
prayer a white calm peace gathered and rose
from the shadows, and fell upon her heart and
her eyes like dew.

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

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
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

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 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.

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
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.

“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?”

“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

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

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.”