Next morning came another little note from Geoffrey. He would arrive in London at noon that day. When and where could they meet? Would she come to the studio as soon as her day's work was over? Might he come to see her, or should they meet out-of-doors somewhere? Anything she decided—though she was implored not to put him off until to-morrow. Would she please telegraph?

Evarne looked across the breakfast table.

"Philia, in what costume do I look nicest of all?"

The answer was prompt.

"You looks nicest of all in yer own skin, and nothin' else."

The girl smiled.

"But that hardly does for this occasion, all the same. I'm going to supper with—with Geoff."

"Beg yer parding. 'E's really 'ome, then? Wear anythin' yer choose. 'E won't never notice!"

Evarne feared she was a most restless and impatient model that day. The hours seemed interminable. But they were got through somehow, and at seven o'clock in the evening she stepped from a hansom and proceeded to mount the three flights of broad stairs that led up to the studio. Her heart was throbbing so wildly that even before the first landing was reached her breath came with difficulty, and a feeling almost of faintness obliged her to stand still for a few moments, to reconquer some degree of calmness.

The door of Geoff's flat was already wide open, and just within the hall stood the young man himself, awaiting her coming. The instant he caught the first glimpse of her approaching, he bounded downstairs and seized both the hands she held out to him.

For a minute they stood motionless and speechless, more than content to once again feast their eyes upon one another's faces. Then, still without a word, they mounted the last flight of stairs, holding hands like children, and the door of the flat closed behind them.

They were alone together for the first time.

Evarne went into the sitting-room. The curtains were drawn, and two rose-pink shaded lamps cast a warm, softening glow upon the heavy oak furniture. Calmly enough she took off her hat, carefully stuck in the pins, and placed it on a chair. Then she turned round suddenly, and all her wealth of hidden feeling quivered in her voice.

"Oh, Geoff, Geoff! How sweet beyond words it is to see you again!"

In a second his arms were around her, and she was strained to his breast with a force that was almost painful. In silence he looked, eagerly and intently, deep into the limpid brown eyes so near his own. Such ineffable tenderness and devotion frankly answered his ardent, searching gaze, that the force of his worship for this beautiful woman grew not only unspeakable, but nigh too overwhelmingly great to be borne. His brows contracted, and all unconsciously he uttered a deep-breathed "Oh!" that bordered on a groan of pain; then suddenly sinking on his knees before her with the abandon of his artistic temperament, he seized both her hands, covering them with kisses. At last, pressing her soft palms hard against his cheeks, he rested motionless, and scarcely could she hear his murmured broken words—

"How I adore you! I can scarcely endure it. You are more perfect even than I remembered. Evarne! Evarne!"

She was already bending slightly forward, for unconsciously he was dragging her hands downwards. She leant lower, and lightly brushed his fair hair with her lips. A divan was close by. She sank down, and, still kneeling, Geoffrey rested his folded arms upon her knees and looked up into her face.

The turmoil of strong emotion was still so far beyond all possible expression, that to both speech could have been merely a mockery. For a protracted period nothing was said in spoken words. When Evarne finally broke the long silence it was with tones so soft, so appealing, that they were in themselves a gentle caress, although the actual words were commonplace enough.

"You won't leave me again? You won't go away any more?"

"Not without you, my dearest, my dearest! Never shall I go without you—no, not even to the end of the street—if I can persuade you to come with me."

"And I would follow you willingly, whatever might await us at the end of the street."

"You really love me?"

"You want to hear my voice tell you what you know so well already?"

Geoff answered only with his eyes. Evarne put out both hands and drew his head to her bosom, pressing it so tightly that he felt the throbbing of her heart against his cheek. After a minute the gentle whisper floated to his ears—

"I loved you yesterday. I love you to-day, and I shall love you to-morrow." After a little pause she added, "I'll tell you something more too."

"Nothing else seems to matter. Still, do tell me!"

"It's just a little nothing. Only this—that I cared for you before you ever cared for me."

"No, 'twas just contrariwise! It's no use to shake your perverse darling head. I can prove it."

"You mean you can try."

"Now, listen. Remember that I saw you before you ever saw me. You were reading the paper, but I was reading your face. I had loved you for at least three full minutes before you ever beheld me. How now?"

Evarne laughed happily.

"Yes, you have won after all. Do you know, I like so much to be told that your gaze was never coldly critical, or even indifferent to me."

"I can't imagine love that does not come at first sight," declared Geoff with enthusiasm. "Not in all its full force and power, naturally, but at least as an immediate conviction that here at length is the one who is to become dearest in the whole world. Yet one hears of people knowing each other for years before they learn to love. Isn't that so? What sort of feelings do you suppose fill the space of time between the first seeing and the first loving, when the two are not almost simultaneous? Just interest and liking?"

"It is no use looking questioningly at me," Evarne replied, shaking her head gently. "Besides, I thought men had always had so much past experience in that direction that they knew just everything."

Geoff smiled at her.

"Oh, you did, did you? I'm afraid that branch of my education has been shamefully neglected. And you—you cannot teach me?"

"Can't I, then? I know every whit as much concerning love as did Diotima, who instructed Socrates in the art."

"And who taught you, pray?"

"Don't be jealous. I never had to learn; it's a natural talent. Perhaps it was a gift from my fairy godmother."

"Then it is all theory?"

"Oh yes."

For half a minute Geoff did not speak. Painfully conscious that she had now told him her first deliberate falsehood, Evarne glanced into his thoughtful eyes with sudden apprehension. Then she hastened to break in upon this silence, in which another such terrible question, incapable of truthful answer, was perhaps being formulated.

"You must have thought you cared for somebody before you saw me, Geoff. Do tell me?"

"Very well. Now this is the solemn truth. Not only have I never loved any other woman before you, but I've never even made the mistake of thinking a passing fancy was the real thing. I've never burned incense at the shrine of any false goddess. In my heart I've loved you all my life—that is, the idea of you, Evarne. I've worshipped you and waited for you, sweetheart, and now, thank God, I've found you."

She answered very gently and slowly, her heart glowing with triumph and delight at his avowal.

"If it were possible, I should care for you even more after hearing you say that. But how can I love you more than to the very uttermost of my nature, and I believe I have done that from the first."

Geoffrey found this frank and unaffected confession more adorable than any coquettish hesitation could have proved.

"But even if I had not been able to win your heart, I should still have loved you always and ever, and held myself your knight, ready to obey your slightest or your most difficult command, my queen," he avowed with boyish enthusiasm. "I feel that it was preordained that I should love you, and I should have readily fulfilled my fate, even if you had never been able to care for me in return."

She sighed and shook her head.

"Ah, Geoffrey, do you love me indeed? Almost I doubt it."

"You doubt it? Evarne!"

"You can't imagine what I mean? Sit by my side and I'll explain."

Reclining delightfully in Geoff's arms, her slender arched feet curled up on the couch, she expounded her startling statement.

"When you say that it would not make any—well, not much—difference in your feelings towards me if I did not care for you in return, I wonder if you are not indulging in a state of mind peculiar to poetic temperaments such as yours, my dearest, and I feel jealous."

"Dear child—jealous of whom?"

"Cannot you guess? Why, of Love itself. I believe you are so happy in having me to care for, simply because you delight in loving. You are a worshipper of love in the abstract; you fairly glory in that frame of mind people call 'being in love.' The possession of the emotion means more to you than the possession of any particular woman. There are some terrible people like that. They would rather their mistress died than that she should destroy the love she had awakened in their hearts."

"Now, fair Diotima, just please name one single individual who ever felt that way."

"Easily! What about Dante, the patron saint of such sinners? Do you suppose he could have had any ordinary personal affection for his precious Beatrice? Why, he only saw her twice, or something of that sort, and she was respectably married to somebody else, yet she coloured his whole life, and he seems to have been quite contented. And he is never without disciples—a few. Oh, I know you—people who are in love with Love itself."

"Yes? Go on telling me about them."

Interested though he was in her slightest word, Geoffrey, man-like, was not giving all his mind to Evarne's ideas. He was enthralled by the contemplation of her sinuous, supple form, her tenderly waving hair and satin-smooth skin, and the live beams of her glancing eye; he was glorying in the dulcet music of her voice.

"Well," she went on, feigning discontent, while her very heart seemed pulsating in notes of perfect happiness—"well, you find some woman whom you can idealise and adore, and if she be but passably gracious to you, you proceed to make a world of happiness for yourselves merely from loving her, dreaming of her, writing poems to her or painting pictures that you think she has inspired—though really it is nothing but your own capacity for loving that she has made active that is the true source of your inspiration. Even if you rarely see her it seems to make very little difference—you still dream, still find inspirations, still do great work under the divine influence of Aphrodite. You live in the enchanted Palace of Love, and once safely there, are horribly independent of the woman who opened its magic portals to you. Oh, sorry fate that led me to love an artist! So long as I condescend to exist and remain tolerably young and beautiful, all is well. I cannot possibly feel that your entire happiness depends upon my presence or my absence, my smile or my frown. Now do you see my grievance?"

"I can't believe you know it, but you actually seem to imply that you care for me more sincerely, more humanly, than I do for you, which is obviously impossible."

"I don't see the 'obviousness.' I should rather like to."

"I'll soon tell you. You won't laugh at me?"

"Laugh! Oh, my darling!"

"Well, then, the fact that it is you, your own dear self, that I so glory in, and not any mere abstract mental condition, is proved by this. I confess I always hoped the time would come when I should be genuinely in love. That's what you are not to laugh at, by the way! I knew somehow that I had all the capacity for intense devotion, and naturally enough, I suppose, longed to exercise it. So if practically any young and attractive woman would have served as the sort of figure-head you describe, should I have been forced to wait—unwillingly enough, I can tell you—until you, my only possible beloved, appeared upon the scene? Of course not."

"You had to wait for me—for me—for me!" sang Evarne, keeping the time in her little song of triumph by clapping her hands.

"It is very wicked of you to be so pleased about it. Why did you not come along earlier, my blessing? It is a perfect misery, nothing else, to be empty-hearted. It is terrible to feel a thousand emotions seeking desperately for an outlet. Why did your star linger so long in crossing mine?"

But no sympathy was to be extracted from Evarne.

"It has all been just as is best. You have been most fortunate," she declared. "Love is not the be-all and end-all of any life, you know, and when you think of your chosen work—which is the real thing—I'm sure you can't regret any emotional experiences, however distressing they may have been in the learning. They are all needful training for the production of soul-stirring pictures; as necessary, in their way, as is the enchantment of loving and being loved that is now going to help you still further. Mental turmoil of every type bears its own special fruit that may be garnered by an artist to his own advantage. Stagnation, ignorance and lack of variety in emotions brings ultimate failure in imaginative work. Thus speaks Diotima the Second."

Far-away, curious echoes seemed ringing in Evarne's brain. When and where and in what familiar voice had she heard such sentiments spoken long, long ago?

"Well, it certainly is consoling to put all one's mental worries into the same category as freehand drawing and perspective," declared Geoff; and being both ardently happy and therefore easily amused, they laughed merrily.

After a moment's pause he went on—

"But don't you think the secret tragedy of many a seemingly commonplace and prosaic person is the lack of someone to be earnestly and devotedly adored? Don't you think many and many a heart suffers from a craving to exercise strong powers of loving forever ungratified? I'm speaking of a spiritual demand—not of the universal desire to find a mate that is just part of Nature's artful little scheme for ensuring the due arrival of the next generation. Do you think that demand of the spirit proves a man merely a willing follower of Dante?"

"Oh, no no!—I suppose not. But, despite your specious arguments, I still maintain that you, individually, are one to rate love higher than any object. Obstinate, am I not?"

"Absolutely wicked, you dearest. I love you, my Evarne—you yourself—in every possible way under the sun, including the ordinary human love of any man, artist or not, for the woman he seeks for his wife. There is perhaps a tiny atom of truth in one of the charges you have hurled at me, but——"

"I knew it, my dear commonplace lover. Confess, and I'll see if I can forgive you."

"I think, perhaps—dearest, I don't like even to speak of it—but perhaps even your—I mean, if the world lost you, my own beloved——"

"If I died?"

He flinched even at the words that expressed the possibility, but went on—

"That it would cause a more—how can I express my meaning? Well, in one way, possibly, even that would cause a less ever-present gap in my mental life than would the destruction of my love for you.... It's no use hitting me," he laughed; "I can't help it, sweetest!" Then he clasped her closely with sudden eager passion. "But do not think that your dreamer is at all content to worship only in spirit, Evarne."

Then, impulsively, he poured forth a flood of words, ardent, impassioned, throbbing with that fiery sex-love that dominates the entire world—selfish, unheeding, remorseless—words of that terrible overwhelming passion that will not be long denied.

"That's how I want to be loved," she whispered, but flung herself away from his grasp just in order to be drawn close once more.

He seized her convulsively, held her in a cruelly fast grip, covering her cheeks, her brow, her mouth with kisses, violent and tender in turns. At last, pressing his face against hers, he rested motionless. She felt the influence of the contact spread itself slowly throughout her entire frame, subtle and concentrated as electricity, and under its power her breast heaved, and she breathed only in short troubled gasps. The whole room, the whole world, seemed to be throbbing, to be trembling—perhaps it was only the arms that enfolded her that quivered—she neither knew nor cared to know.

A deep silence held sway. The only moment's speech was when Geoffrey murmured a sudden question about their marriage, begging, imploring for an early date. It should be quite soon, Evarne promised. It should be within six weeks, five weeks, a month, less still, if he so desired.

She had hesitated perceptibly before she answered. This definite and verbal plighting of her troth was opposed—actively, violently—for a few moments, by the resurrection of those scruples she fancied had faded away once and for all—false and misleading will-o'-the-wisps of chivalrous truth and honour, leading the unwise into bogs of wild despair and utter misery. When at last she did speak it was in a voice fraught with tremulous emotion, low, yet inexpressibly thrilling—notes softer than the cooing of wood-doves, and which reverberated upon the young artist's highly-strung nerves with subtle emphasis.

More than once Evarne had thought that his nature now was not unlike what her own had been originally, before three years of constant effort to please a jaded, middle-aged man, added to unbroken association with coarse, depraved minds, had sullied her soul, blunted her finer susceptibilities, ruined her taste for the more delicate viands of love's feast. Once upon a time she had sought with all her strength to keep the affection that was offered her free from all savour of passion; now, when devotion, as poetical, refined and idealistic as imagination could devise had been laid at her feet, she had felt starved, chilled, unsatisfied.

But as she looked into her dreamer's altered face and saw its new expression, saw the grey eyes so strangely gleaming, the slight occasional twitching of his lips, the distinct though almost imperceptible veil of moisture that covered his brow, she felt for a moment strangely degraded—curiously identical with the early Christian Fathers' estimate of women. A moment's bitter regret of her own personality cast its shadow. Geoff was too good for her. Ought he not to love a young, innocent girl—one of those sweet maidens who are to be found here and there even in this grimy world, with thoughts white as snow-drifts, and surely invisible halos around their meek downcast heads—pure spirits that were scarcely conscious of possessing bodies, and would assuredly never miss them? Ought not one of these to have been Geoff's bright particular star?

"Are you certain you love me; that you're not deceiving yourself?" she asked again and again, and each time the only response was a long kiss that penetrated to her heart's core; a speaking, all-answering gaze; a closer, almost frantic tightening of the arms in which she reclined.

And her moods changed as a kaleidoscope. Suddenly she laughed aloud in triumphant satisfaction at herself, all that she was, all that she could be. Of course Geoff loved her, and he should love her yet more. Placid snow-maidens—you must be content to shine in heaven; not yours is it to make men thank God for life!

Now to the man who loved her Evarne appeared the very acme of all perfection. And indeed, in that hour she verily was all that is most appealing—most adorable—most exquisite. Her beauty was transcendent, and her expression remained more noble, more respect-compelling than she knew. And yet, all the while, her soft brown eyes, whether swimming in happy, purposeless tears or shining with inward fire, told, with more convincing eloquence than lies within the power of speech, of the utter abandonment of the soul they mirrored to the domination of the most ardent and enthralling affection. She was all tenderness, passion, charm, fascination. Her powerful magnetism encircled her as an invisible cloud. Who, amid mortals, coming within the radius of its influence, could have saved himself from worshipping this fair woman to the very uttermost limits of his capacity?

The stress of her own emotion was exhausting; a delicious languor, a placid dreaminess, tinged with melancholy; crept upon her. She felt incapable of further movement or speech, and allowed her long-fringed lids to veil her eyes. When she lifted them again it was to behold her lover's gaze fixed upon her in a fresh access of passionate adoration that could not be left unanswered. She smiled up at him, a gentle little smile; it seemed serene and calm, but behind it, like unto a powerful naked figure veiled in gauze, gleamed love that was resolute, indomitable, heroic.

Her inarticulate little murmurs, her half-sighs, all her tiny actions had been enchanting, enthralling; but her smile—always sweet and moving—was now provocative of ecstasy. Dazed, unconscious of his own personality, again Geoff knelt before her, his arms clasped around her waist, his face pressed against her soft body. Oblivious to all of life save love alone, he bathed his spirit in this inexhaustible fund of the gods' best gift.

What said Evarne's most-admired philosopher?

"I say then of all in general, both men and women, that the whole of our race would be happy if we worked out love perfectly, and if each were to meet with his beloved."

Was not Diotima, who taught Socrates, a wise woman indeed, capable of imparting the truest, the most divine of all wisdom?

Thus the winged hours sped past.

A dainty little supper was ready, and finally they sat down side by side and played at eating. Over the little meal the conversation became really quite practical and business-like.

Geoffrey had said nothing of the prospect he had of succeeding sooner or later to his childless cousin's earldom. That startling piece of information seemed to him to be best reserved for discussion on some other less idyllic occasion. But it was partly this that gave emphasis to his inquiry.

"You will not continue posing now, will you, dearie?"

"I have not any choice," laughed Evarne. "There are some people who make me. Let me see, there's the landlord and the tradesmen and——"

"Then come here, won't you? Really, I not only want you—I need you. I'm going to start a big picture—any number of figures in it."

"What is the subject, and who am I to be?"

"I want you for Andromache. I'm going to paint the captured Trojan women."

"I shall make a realistic captive, Geoff, being one in very sooth."

"And I verily believe I was inspired to paint such a subject by the consciousness that I was free no longer, my captor. I shall make a great thing of this picture, Evarne; at least, I ought to. Everything will be in my favour. Poor old Jack! He is still lamenting his unprocurable model—his 'Belle Dame.'"

"How different his work is from yours; poor old Jack!"

"I am going to try hard to persuade him to take up portrait-painting definitely. He really is very clever, you know. He ought to do well. Or sculpture; he's quite strong at that. But he will insist on trying to be imaginative, and he doesn't shine there. Now, when is the earliest day you can come?"

"It so happens that I finish to-morrow with the man I'm sitting for at present. That's Thursday, the twentieth, isn't it? Then I have nothing to do until Monday the twenty-fourth, when I ought—it's all arranged—you see I didn't expect you home until September!"

"A lot of engagements, have you?"

"I've only a few spare days here and there for the next seven weeks."

"But we're going to be married long before that time. Look here, Evarne love, give them all up! Don't sit for anyone else but me. Come, spoil me a bit. Let me be selfish. My picture is all ready and waiting for the model."

"It's terribly unfair to the others, but——"

"Never mind them. Seriously, I mean it."

"It's a shame, when they've been waiting, but there—it's delightful to be unkind to other people, and treat them badly for your sake. It shall be as you wish. It is wrong, though! Aren't you ashamed?"

A little later eleven o'clock struck. Evarne pinned on her hat.

"Oh, don't go yet! It's far too early," cried Geoffrey.

But Evarne only smiled.

"On the contrary, it is rather late. Say good-bye quickly," she responded.

The timepiece ticked on placidly, neither faster nor slower than its usual steady wont.

"Goodness gracious, Geoff, you must send that silly old clock to be mended. It actually has jumped a whole quarter of an hour! It is no use its pretending we have been twenty minutes saying good-bye. Do call a taxi quickly."

"And to-morrow I'm coming to supper with you. Oh dear me! twenty-four hours to wait!"

"Only about twenty now; and remember, if our stars in their courses had not chanced to touch, we might have both lived twenty-four years more—and more still—and been lonely to the end. See what we have escaped."

By midnight Evarne was safely alone in her own little bedroom. She studied her reflection in the mirror before removing her hat, and smiled with pleasure to behold cheeks blooming as a blush rose; lips made up of happy curves; and eyes shining for very joy as brightly as the most brilliant stars in the summer heaven.