dressed and more careless about herself-she had never been very conspicuous for neatness, or for the time or trouble that she spent upon her dress or person-sallower, thinner in the face, darker under the eyes, and less upright of carriage. She also grew more nervous and irritable, though she never showed this to her uncle or aunt, and more shy and silent than ever. But nothing injured the beauty of her voice or of her eyes.

Her voice was singularly clear and strong, with the soft and mellow fulness that never belongs to the true soprano, and the peculiar kind of sweetness with which the women of Italy and of Britain alone seem favoured. Though not of the true soprano, it was quite removed from the contralto quality, and would have been popularly classed as being of the former. Maurice was, however, not quite right when, in one of his letters to Lawson, he spoke of her perfect style. She sang in perfect tune, certainly, but her school was full of faults, such as would have offended the least fastidious of critics. Often, however, she would, by what seemed a happy chance, light upon some new rendering of a phrase, or some new effect which showed that her worst faults arose from anything but want of feeling or intelligence.

The English artist could not but be interested in her, and his interest could not but grow in proportion to the growth of their acquaintance. Otherwise, however, and independently of her voice, she had no attraction for him whatever, but rather the contrary. The lover of the beautiful, the graceful, and the amiable Grace Owen, about whom everything was always in perfect taste and in perfect keeping, was the last man who was likely to feel the least attraction towards the plain, ungraceful, and ungracious Italian, whom poverty and the hard circumstances in which she had spent her life had rendered, not, indeed, ill-bred,-na

ture had taken care of that, but as far removed from the idea of a dame des salons as could well be. All the refining influences of life had always surrounded Grace Owen: very few, always excepting those of Art, had touched the imperfect life of Antonia Salvi. And as to eyes, Edward Maurice had spoken the exact truth when he said that none, however beautiful, could surpass the sweet, pure eyes of the fair girl in England, who was to be his wife-eyes in which he had read a hundred times all the truth and love of a true and loving heart.

The interest, however, such as it was, that he took in the position and character of Antonia led him to repeat his visit to the apartment across the passage. The Italians were always glad to see him, as they had no friends, and scarcely any acquaintance; and a real liking sprang up among them. All, however, had their illusions about each other that of Salvi himself being the idea that the charm of his own very mediocre performances on the violin was the attraction for the English painter; for, although vain to excess of his niece's talents, he was infinitely more vain of his

own.

It was no very unusual thing, then, that one day in the following January Maurice tapped at Salvi's door, or that he heard the clear voice of Antonia cry "Come in!" or that he entered and found her alone. Her uncle was out, as usual, and her aunt was probably asleep in the next room. Antonia herself was engaged in her never-ending task of trying to make her silbergroschen come right.

"How busy you look, Antonia," said Maurice. "You look like a Minister of Finance, at the least."

She shrugged herself together, something after the manner of her uncle.

"I often wish I was a queen," she said, "but never so much as when I have my accounts to do."

"Because then I should have a Finance Minister to save me the trouble."

"Perhaps the Queen that is to be-of Song-will appoint me to the office?"

"Look here!" she answered, wrinkling together her straight, black eyebrows, and pushing to him petulantly a small greasy account-book. See what you can make of that."

It would have taxed the utmost skill of the most skilful accountant to have made head or tail of the extraordinary specimen of compound addition and subtraction that was put into the hands of Maurice, who, not being even so much as an unskilful one, looked at it vaguely upside down. His look of bewilderment changed Antonia's mood in a moment, and she burst into a fit of laughter.

"I am afraid you will have to appoint me to some other office," said Maurice. "Finance was never very much in my line. But perhaps I can help you, nevertheless. Shall we try?"

Antonia really brightened at the suggestion, and for some minutes the two were deep in the mysteries of Saxon coinage. Certainly the disbursements were small, but enormous in proportion to the receipts. At last the discrepancy became so glaring, and there seemed so little hope of inventing any new system of management, that if Antonia had been alone she would have wept herself into a headache with despair; but, as she chanced to have a companion, her innate Bohemianism and her defiant spirit got the better of her, and she worked herself into a reckless vein of talk and laughter.

It is as unnecessary as it would be impossible to produce any extracts from the little volume that formed at once the day-book and ledger of the family of the violinist. But, prosaic as were the contents, Maurice was really touched to the

heart. Probably not ninety-nine persons out of a hundred really understand the intense distress that some men-of whom he was onefeel when they see great talents doomed to be checked and balked by undeserved poverty and the petty cares of conventional life. But the few who do understand it will readily comprehend the feelings of Edward Maurice towards Antonia. If she had been his greatest enemy, he would, with pleasure and eagerness, have spent more than he could well spare to have placed her in her true position. Whenever he heard her voice, while he stood before his picture, he lamented her probable fate, and tried to form schemes whereby it might be reversed. But as yet he formed no resolution.

About this time he wrote the following letter to Lawson :

"DRESDEN, January 15, 184-. "DEAR FRANK, -When I last wrote to you, the leaves were still on the trees. What a long time back that makes it seem! Now, we are ice-bound, and do little else than skate. Which is most to be envied of us two? You, on the whole, I think. But we have our pleasures too.

"I wish you could see my picture, as I want some one to give me a genuine opinion-some one who knows what I used to be, and could say whether I have improved or no. I cannot do very much to it just now, as the days are so short; but it is not very far from being finished, and will, I hope, be ready in a month or two.

"I never have any news from England now, except what I read in newspapers, and about that I don't much care. That is not news, in my sense, as you know. I sometimes think of taking a holiday and running over for a month; but the experiment would be too dangerous. After all, I have got over a quarter of my time, though it has seemed so long.

"What in the world shall I find to write about? You won't care to hear about skating, coffee-parties-which in dulness beat even the British tea-fight hollow-or any one whom I know, and of whom, excepting my cantatrice on the other side of the passage, you never heard. By the way, I wish I had not heard her quite so often myself. If you lived with me you would soon find out to your cost what makes me mention her in every letter I write. If the noise she makes in the world is ever anything like what she makes at No. 25 Strasse, you will hear of her often enough in time. She is, however, an amusing person to talk to, with more brains than beauty. She is very naïve and original too; and though her criticism is not exactly according to rule, it generally has meaning. How many of us could say as much?

"You see that I am writing more to ask you to write than to tell you anything. Sometimes I get a sort of home-sickness on me, and long to hear a voice from my old world. Work is not enough to fill one's whole life-especially mine, with whom it is so much more a means than an end. With some men, I know, it is different. Tibald himself, for instance, never seems to have an idea in his head, or a feeling in his heart, that has not reference to his work. If he were the most hopelessly stupid and unsuccessful man in the world, instead of being the contrary, I believe he would still work on in his own way, though the result were starvation. I sometimes feel quite angry with him. He is deaf to music, and apparently the most prosaic man in the world-never

even talks about pictures except in the way that a carpenter talks about chairs and tables-all the energy and all the enthusiasm that he must have about him somewhere he bottles up and lets out from his finger-ends, never from his tongue or his eyes. He never needs rest or amusement. He seems an incarnation of Goethe's "Without haste-but without rest." Every hour of daylight he is at workevery hour that he is awake he is thinking, in company with his meerschaum. He never dreams, not even in sleep. He tells me that he only had a dream once in his life, and what do you suppose it was? Some vague striving after ideal beauty-some great attempt to express an unattainable thought? Not the least. He dreamed that Titian told him that be better keep clear of heaven, for they got white beer there, and not Bavarian. Then he works so provokingly slowly. But what results! You know those works of his, so honestly emulating those of the giants of old, so grand, so full of poetry, and yet almost so over-faultless. He seems, too, as a teacher, to read the nature of one's talent by intuition, and knows how to bring it out; and he has a genius for criticism, though it is always of the cold and judicial order-he never seems to hate or to love. Sheer power and strength, without beauty-that is his character: he seems to put so much beauty into his work that he seems to have left none to spare for life.

"I confess I do not understand such a man. I say, let life be beautiful as a whole. Art is not everything. What say you at Rome?-Yours ever,

"E. MAURICE."

However much or little Maurice thought about Antonia, she certainly thought a great deal about him.

He was the first person she had ever known who was capable of giving her anything like sympathy

in her vague aspirations-who could share her feeling about Art as something more than a means of obtaining one's share of the good things of this earth. When but a child, her questions and her dreams, which she then used to pour forth with impulsive frankness, had been as little understood by those about her as if she talked the language of another world—as, in fact, she did. With the quickness of all children in such matters, she soon found this out, and drew into herself more and more, and became strange and solitary. The wandering life her family led had always prevented her forming more than the most passing acquaintance with other girls of her own age, and those with whom she did meet interested her but little; and so she passed the unhappy youth which such natures must inevitably undergounhappy even when surrounded by affectionate sympathy, but unspeakably miserable when, as is usually the case, it is misunderstood. When such natures have grown old enough to appreciate the world and themselves, the bitterness passes away. True genius accepts with a proud and silent resignation its solitary fate, and rejoices in shedding abroad its warmth and light without even wishing for the least return. But Antonia, as yet, understood neither herself nor the world. She still longed for sympathy and to meet with some nature that might speak her own language and comprehend something of what filled her soul.

She was not an acute analyst of the characters of others-her experience was too confined, and her nature too introspective and selfcontained. She always accepted others who showed her any kindness at an estimation higher even than that at which they valued themselves; and, as Maurice was, in many points, really her superior -in experience and cultivation, for instance-she was only too willing to lean on and confide in him. She was woman, after all.

VOL. CIII.-NO. DCXXXII.

Maurice, on the contrary, was, consciously and intentionally, an analyser of men and things. Though of a lighter and less intense character than Antonia, his imagination, his experience of men and women, and that almost feminine sensibility which is a common phenomenon of the artistic temperament, led him to comprehend Antonia's character very soon. He could not, perhaps, feel quite like her, but he could understand her feelings much better than she could understand them herself.

It gradually became more and more the habit of Antonia, as the familiarity of friendship increased, to ask Maurice for advice in her difficulties. One day-it was at the end of February-she entered his studio for the first time. The affair was urgent, and as he had not visited his neighbours for some days, she was obliged to anticipate his coming. When she entered he was at work upon his picture of The Death of Moreau.' Her eye immediately rested upon the work, which was very nearly finished. She was the first person who had seen it except the painter himself.

Maurice noticed the direction of her look with an anxiety which he would not have confessed even to himself, and it was with a feeling of unconscious disappointment that she made no remark on what she saw, but entered at once on the business upon which she had come. Before she left him, however, he was determined to sound her upon the subject of his picture-not that he doubted the favourable nature of her opinion, but that, like all artists-and he certainly did not differ from his brethren in this respect his soul longed for the encouragement of praise, especially as he felt sure that hers would not be unappreciative. He therefore said:

"I am glad that you have at last visited my magnificent atelier. I wish, though, I had something bet

2 Y

ter to show you. You see even this is unfinished."

She looked well at the great historical picture of the dying Marshal, but said nothing. Something in her expression reminded Maurice -strangely enough-of Tibald; and the fancy made him smile. In point of fact, she wanted to find something to say, but could not. Who among those who frequent the studios has not felt so a thousand times? And who among artists has not felt the chill that follows that unwilling silence on the part of some valued visitor? Not painters only, but musicians and poets also know it well-and their friends even better than they.

Antonia was certainly anything but a gushing person she had no flattery at the end of her tongue.

"Will

"I see," she said at last. it be long before it is quite finished? I never like to say what I think before the end."

"You are right in that. Processes should always be kept concealed."

"Besides, I am a bad judge of pictures," said Antonia.

"I hope so, most devoutly. But do you not care for Art-for painting, I mean?" Perhaps the unexpected failure of Moreau rankled in him a little.

"Not care for them? Why do you ask that?"

"You said they do not remain in your memory. Now that I rather look on as a test."

"I daresay you are right," she answered-"and yet I am not sure. The fact is, that when I leave a gallery I generally remember one picture and no more; and the more I look at, the less I can remember of the others and the more of the one. You know the Louvre ?" "Well."

"Well, then-out of all the pictures there-I believe I saw them all with my father-I only remember one."

"And that is?"

'Oh, I hardly know. In fact I

have never talked much about such things."

"But you must have seen a great many pictures?"

"A great many-but I remember very few.'

"You must have seen more than I-I know only London and Paris and here you know Florence, and Rome, and Venice, besides Dresden and Paris."

"Yes-and Munich as well. But you beat me by London. Are there many pictures there?"

"A great many. But I envy you Italy."

"You will go there some day, I suppose?"

"What is it you know best here?"

"Our Lady again most beautiful of all."

but the

"I suppose you mean the San Sisto?"

"I daresay it is called so." "But do you not remember my favourite 'La Notte'-the Coreggio?"

"Which is that?"

"The picture where Mary is bending over the cradle. Do you not remember it by the wonderful light streaming upon the mother's face from the glory of her child?"

"I remember! It is beautiful indeed. But the other-I know it by heart."

"It is indeed a great picture. But, somehow, it disappointed

me."