Within a week of taking up her residence at "Mon Bijou," Evarne started her career at Florelli's. She proved very painstaking, and earnest—so much so as to cause considerable surprise to the other students, who had judged, from the luxury of her attire and appointments, that she was a mere dilettante.

She was far and away the most elementary pupil in the studio, and truth to tell did not find it particularly interesting to sit alone hour after hour in a corner, covering reams of Michallet, and using up boxes of charcoal in repeated struggles to depict gigantic plaster replicas of detached features from Michael Angelo's "David," or innumerable casts of torsos, of arms and legs, hands and feet, in all sizes and attitudes—painfully suggestive of amputations.

For stimulus and encouragement she would peep into the two rooms where the more advanced students were working from life, in one room from the costume model, in the other from the nude. The mental atmosphere of these rooms was so full of energy and enthusiasm that she would return with fresh ardour to her limbs and features.

Not that she was able to devote all her time to the services of the exigent Muses, nor, alas! could this pursuit arouse the keenest, most engrossing thoughts and energies of which her nature was capable. Interest in this, as in everything else in the wide universe, showed pallid and feeble before the overwhelming and concentrated interest of her love for Morris Kenyon. There was something almost tragic in such a domination. Barely seventeen, her heart and mind should have been still too youthful, too immature, to conceive and sustain such force of emotion.

Morris had many friends in Naples, and both visited and entertained considerably. Evarne, both by reason of her studies and her recent loss, could be prevailed upon to take very little part in any fÊtes. Still, she started to learn Italian, and was soon able to express her will to Bianca in all simple matters, and to amuse Morris by her courageous, laughable efforts.

She fancied herself a perfect little diplomatist, and was blissfully unaware that her affection for him was very soon betrayed to his experienced eye by her every look—every word—every action. Under the circumstances, silence on the momentous topic so uppermost in both minds was naturally not maintained for long.

One night as she sat on a footstool at his feet, spoiling her eyesight by delicate fancy work, not speaking much, but at intervals contentedly humming a little song, a sudden impatience at further waste of time took possession of him.

"Evarne," he said abruptly, and as the girl in all unconsciousness stayed her needle and looked up inquiringly, he bent forward, and without any warning pressed his lips to hers. Then, shaken from his habitual calm, he placed his hands heavily upon her shoulders and gazed intently into her eyes, his expression telling yet more than his actions.

She remained motionless as if hypnotised, her face still uplifted. "Evarne, sweetest little Evarne!" he murmured after a pause, in accents tender and caressing. At the sound of his voice she dropped her head slowly lower and yet lower, until it finally rested upon his knee. Still she spoke nothing.

Slipping his arms around her, he forcibly drew her up until her head was pillowed upon his breast. Then he kissed her again and again, kissed her brow, her hair, her cheeks, her mouth.

"Darling, are you happy?" he breathed at length into her ear.

Upon this the girl released herself from his hold, and kneeling erect by his side, looked with wide-open, excited, somewhat horrified eyes straight into his. It was no highly-wrought sentiment either of love or indignation that fell from her lips. Simply, yet emphatically, she cried—

"Oh, we mustn't! we mustn't! We were both forgetting your wife!"

Morris was rather proud of his versatility, and cultivated the art of being all things to all women. The last lady on whom he had temporarily bestowed his affections had, like Evarne, been tactless and inconsiderate enough to invoke the memory of the happily absent one at a critical moment. To Evarne's predecessor he had lightly remarked, "Oh! hang my wife, Birdie. She doesn't count." Birdie had giggled, called him a "naughty man," and there had been an end to that topic.

To have addressed any such flippant answer to Evarne and her clamouring conscience would have meant the end of all things. Morris unhesitatingly took the one and only course that would serve his turn now. He adopted the plan of apparent perfect frankness, not only regarding the legal partner of his joys and woes, but concerning much else that he had hitherto kept hidden.

With many a sign of great mental struggle, now flashing forth eloquent glances, now veiling his eyes from her clear, searching gaze, he made confession of his deception concerning Mrs. Kenyon's promised presence at "Mon Bijou." He waxed alternately ardent and pathetic as he discoursed upon the love he bore Evarne and all that it meant to him, vowing that it was the intensity of his affection alone that had prompted him to his falsehood. He abused himself so unsparingly, that half-unconsciously she was moved to utter a pleading little cry of pity and expostulation.

Thereupon he went on to explain in touching terms that he was but a lonely, desolate man, rapidly becoming weary of life, embittered and miserable, until her charm, her sweet goodness, aroused him, awoke affection and brought fresh zest into his existence—and so on, and so on.

"My wife, well, she was a nicely-brought-up, rather silly girl, pretty enough once and good-natured too, but now soured and aged by permanent, incurable illness. There is no bond of any kind between us. We have not a thought in common. There are no children; she can never be either companion or wife to me. Frail though she is, she has a marvellous vitality, a wondrous clinging to life. Such unhappy existences—a curse to themselves and others,—are always prolonged. Think of it, dearest, think what it means to a man to be practically tied to a corpse, cut off from all the joy of living."

Then he soared to lofty heights of moralising, told her—or at least implied—that all his hopes of heaven rested upon her gentle influence and affection. "I may seem to others but a hard, somewhat cynical man of the world, yet I have got here"—and in true dramatic style he struck his breast over the supposed region of a presumably panting heart—"I have got here a longing for a true woman's disinterested, faithful affection, such as many a sentimental stringer together of rhymes has never experienced. Evarne, care for me a little; love me, darling. Let me love you. It means everything to me."

All this sentiment quite overcame his sweet-natured listener. Morris had made a studied though carefully veiled appeal, either by his looks or his words, direct to her most generous instincts. If much of it was mere acting—exaggerated and artificial—his passionate desire to gain her love was real enough. It was no reproach to frank, unsuspicious, inexperienced Evarne—already blinded by affection—that she could see only the evident sincerity that inspired all this bombast.

A flood of tender pity and sympathy swelled in her breast; all resentment at his deception, all hesitation and restraint, were swept away. If the assurance of her deep love, her utter trust, did in very truth mean happiness to him, it should be his. Rising to her feet impulsively, she pressed his head with almost fierce force against her bosom, murmuring, "I do love you, my dear one. Indeed, I do love you." Then she bent over, and almost reverently pressed a long kiss upon his brow.

So far, so good, and in mutual love confessed Evarne's ideal was attained! It was rather incomprehensible that she could for one minute have supposed that "finis" would be written in Morris's masculine conception of the old, old story, at a similar point to where it appeared in the poetical version that had been evolved from out her imagination. Yet when, in the course of a very short time, the inevitable discovery was made that he had never entertained the notion of loving her as an "inspiration to a noble life," nor as a "kindred soul," nor as his "good angel," but merely as a man always loves a woman, and that he sought a return of affection in kind, it came as a stunning revelation.

At first Morris had not been at all sure but that she would endeavour to shake the dust of "Mon Bijou" from her feet without delay. In fact, he always declared that, probably inspired by the vicinity of Capri, she had given him to understand that he was on a moral level with the defunct Tiberius. But for her own part her first recollections that were at all clear and distinct were very different.

In all moments of mental disturbance her first desire was for solitude, and in this crisis, bidding Morris not to follow her, she sped wildly out into the dark garden. There, leaning for support against the pillar of a statue, and gazing up at the serene masses of white clouds and the tinted halo encircling the moon, breathing in the perfume of the earth and its green growth, while a gentle breath of sea-breezes played with her heavy hair, she gradually regained calmness.

Her Greek studies had taught her much—so much that she had believed there was but little left for her to learn. Yet to us all is life an untold tale—strange, unique, unguessed. What wisdom of sage, what sensual raptures of pagan poet, had ever prompted her to anticipate the exaltation, the triumph, that awoke at the realisation that she too had her share in the resistless power of womanhood? She felt plunged into full harmony with nature—felt herself knit to the great heart of woman all the world over by the sentient cords of sex-sympathy.

Carried out of herself she flung back her head and gave utterance to emotion by lifting up her voice in song—just full rich notes that rolled forth unconsidered, all unhampered by words—a spontaneous outpouring of glorification and the joy of victory. Pressing both hands hard upon her bosom she felt the force with which it rose and fell beneath her deep breathing, and strangely delighted, the girl laughed triumphantly with the notes of her song.

A sudden step near by startled her into abrupt shamefaced silence: Morris stood by her side. He had been seeking her in the garden and had traced her by this wild song that broke the stillness of the night. Unrestricted displays of feeling were entirely new to Evarne, her previous uneventful routine having given scant cause for much excitement of any sort. Now she felt keen abashment at her extraordinary show of emotion, and was almost humiliated to realise that she was not alone.

"I told you not to follow me. I don't want you," she said quickly and decidedly.

For a moment Morris was startled; then he understood the change that was beginning to take place in her mind. No longer was she a simple child addressing her guardian and benefactor, but a woman growing conscious of her own power. Of course she would be whimsical, capricious, alternately authoritative and submissive, wilful and yielding, like the rest of the darlings.

"I meant to obey," he answered with ready meekness, "but can you blame the impotence of mortal man's resolution when the siren calls?"

Sudden anger flashed over Evarne at this vague suggestion that she had fled from him only to draw him to her side again by her voice.

"I'm not a siren, and I don't say one thing and mean another, though I know you find it difficult to believe that of any woman," she replied curtly, and with head erect walked back through the French window into the brightly-lit room. Once safely out of sight, she darted rapidly upstairs to the safety of her own room.

In a minute or two she heard her name called softly through the door, then the pleading whisper—

"Evarne, I can have no rest unless I know you are not angry with me."

She was silent for a moment, but the delay was brief. No resentment could endure before the music of that dear voice. She guessed right well that a locked door between them was all-sufficient for Morris to endure, so answered him generously, as her heart prompted—

"Rest, then; rest happily now and ever."

Within the peaceful sanctuary of her delicate green and white bedroom, the chief amid her more normal thoughts and feelings resumed their sway. Foremost came that imperative demand for self-approbation—that pride in self—that made her ever the slave of what she held to be honourable. The spirit of righteousness sprang up alert, quick to wage war against the mere suggestion that under any provocation—any excuse of overwhelming stress of love—she should permit herself to be stained by dishonour.

Strong and self-confident, the girl at last sank to sleep. But her slumber was light, and early next morning she was awake and thoughtful. She acknowledged being glad to have experienced the sensations of last night—glad to have been granted that period of exaltation, and to have revelled in it to the full. It had made all life seem more understandable and interesting—yet it had brought about no wondrous change of personality! Evarne still remained herself; still good and conscientious and new to the ways of love; a young philosopher, and therefore indulgent to the natural frailties of mankind. She esteemed Morris not one whit the less for having shown himself but human; yet—realising that he could not make her his wife—her conscience and her wishes united in the resolution that love 'twixt him and herself must ever remain a thing ethereal—a poem—a fair dream—a sweet sentiment blossoming only in the soul.

She went to Florelli's as usual, but her studies occupied a very secondary place in her thoughts. All she meant to say to Morris—all he might perhaps answer—all the beautiful sentiments she had to express and which she was sure must appeal so irresistibly to him—all the lofty ideals of her soul that she was going to impart to his—obtruded themselves between her mind and her drawing.

As she dressed for dinner that evening an unexpected shyness crept over her, and it was with quite an effort that she went downstairs. But all imagined difficulties and embarrassments faded like snow before the sunlight of his eyes. Her own danced for joy at being in his presence again, yet there was a touch of stiffness and formality in her demeanour that was new.

Morris listened more or less patiently to her dear little sermons, and with difficulty resisted stopping her pretty lips with kisses. But she was very much on her dignity that night, so assuring her that she was nothing more than a sweet, refreshing baby, he merely delivered a sermon on his own account, with a very different text.

That night the influence of the day's high meditation rendered her proof against his sophistries, but as time passed their steady reiteration began to make headway. Morris unswervingly bent all his powers to gain control of the situation. The sport amused him. He had nothing to distract his attention, and the prize was so well worth the winning that time and trouble were as nothing. He attempted no sudden decisive coup, feeling greater confidence in the weapons of gentle argument and persuasion, patience and a discreet mingling of ardour and forbearance.