world she regarded the society, in which she now found herself for the first time, with quiet surprise. She sometimes wondered if all people were like these. If so, things were more beautiful than people. It was pleasanter to look at sunsets pictures flowers fountains or churches: yet she liked to look at people too. There was always something or somebody to see; she was pleased to sit still and receive impressions; and she never asked why or to what end. So she saw life at Lady Lappin's little tea-party on the Grand Canal, and was happy. She looked with most wonder at the Contessa Belrotoli whose abrupt transitions from intense repose to jerky movements seemed to compel her attention. She felt a slight fear of Mr Bonamy Playdell who had given her one of his slight elderly nods. She was more afraid of the gleaming glasses and tight uniform of the Captain Tiribomba. Sometimes her eyes wandered to one of the high windows, in which two men were standing somewhat apart from the rest of the party. They were talking with interest but without haste; and in the frequent pauses of their talk they looked out at the light on the water beneath them, and at the various buildings opposite which lay all in shadow. On the face of

the elder man, as he noted some new point of beauty, was a smile almost infantine. As he stood by the window with his broad shoulders somewhat bowed, keen-eyed, with ruddy colour in his cheeks, he made a striking contrast with his young friend's extraordinary delicacy of feature and fastidious lips. Mr Andrew Fernlyn for all his years was an enthusiast.

"He can do well if he will work," he said with that pleasant glow, which he always felt at the prospect of a fresh extension of influence; "but does he really wish to come? He has much to unlearn. He must renounce that fatal popularity. Will he really come to school?"

The young man looked thoughtfully down at the canal. Then with a quaint glance at Mr Fernlyn, as if to deprecate his wrath, he said, "I wish him to come.'

"That won't do. If he does not want to come he won't work. If he doesn't work he will disturb others. I can't have disturbance."

"How about me?" asked the other smiling, with a little malice.

"No, no. You we understand. You are the spoiled child of the house. We can't have two."

'But he will wish to work when he can wish

anything. At present he insists on caring for nothing. He boasts himself broken-hearted. Poor old boy!"

"Boasts himself broken-hearted! How do you know he isn't?"

"How do I know?" and he laughed. "I know Philip pretty well. He has always told me everything the same thing twenty times a-day, or a different thing every hour. When he thought this girl cared for him he suffered agonies of doubt about his own feelings. When she jilted him, as maidens will, he incontinently decided that life was over for him. If you could see the poor boy's letters."

"Heaven forbid ! Poor boy! You are a heartless youth, Stephen."

"You can cure him," said Stephen Aylward detecting his advantage in the other's softened tone. "You can make him work. He is sick of his painting as of everything else; most sick of his easy success, flinging the word 'fool' about on his patrons and himself with a fine prodigality. He is just in the mood to begin again from the bottom."

'He is just in the mood to fall into new and deeper folly," said the man of long experience in the vagaries of youth.

"He must be cured for an age, if not for ever." "There is only one cure for youth," said Andrew Fernlyn with a sigh.

"Have you completed your cure?" asked the other slyly. "Commit one more youthful folly. Come, my master, you must take Philip."

There was music to the ears of Mr Fernlyn in the words "my master." "If I must, I must," he said gruffly, raising his big shoulders as he turned away into the room.

Mr Aylward gave a little laugh as he looked after him, and then sauntered towards the piano, at which the Belrotoli had just seated herself. She received the young Englishman, whose extreme fairness had enchanted her, with a rapid pantomime expressive of sore throat nervousness distracted feelings and the certainty that he would understand her. Then she launched herself into song. Her voice had not preserved its first freshness and vibrated with weakness or emotion. She sang a peasant song of Naples with a fantastic burden. Her singing was not strictly correct; but there was passion, almost fury in the strain. Mr Playdell grew manifestly sentimental. Miss Lindley quivered and sighed. Mr Deane looked at Stephen with the slightest elevation of his delicate eye

brows. Cynthia, who had an extraordinary ear for music, looked at the performer with round eyes. She was pained; but she supposed that it was fine in its way, that there was expression. There was expression: expression in the shoulders, in the dark lean fingers, in the restless eyes, in the vibrating tones. The singer poured out her heart as she so loved to do. Her discontent with life, her delight in the congenial society about her, her passion for liberty, her memories of the young Parisian who had become a bore-all gave power and pathos to the strain. She was full of fire. Her voice went trembling out into the quiet air, and the gondoliers about the steps below lolled and laughed in the sunshine.