“ There was an awkwardness, born of an unwonted shyness, in the movement which was more attractive to the artist than the most graceful attitude he had ever seen her assume. He caught the hand with the rose and crushed them both in his two strong palms, as if to hurt her. She smiled, though her wrist reddened from the sudden pressure. It is more sweet to bear pain from those we love, than to receive kindness from a hand which is not dear.
As Graham was taking his leave, he asked Millicent for two books which she had promised to lend him. ”

“ The few women for whom he cared were elderly people, whose life-battles had been fought and won; who sat enthroned in the calm of that peaceful period when youth is no longer regretted nor old age feared. Such women he could paint without bitterness; and his portrait of his mother was a masterpiece of exquisite sentiment. No woman that he had ever met disliked John Graham; if he was distant and cold, he was honest and courteous, and a gentleman in the deepest sense of the word. He was too chivalrous to revenge himself on any individual; his grief was too great to stoop to anything so mean. ”

“ No longer a half-yielding, shrinking maiden, but a woman, full of tears, before whom some great sorrow, long stifled, had risen up again. Was her nature then two-fold? While she was with other people, Millicent seemed a strong, self-reliant woman, pure and cold, with quick intellectual sympathies, and strong opinions and convictions. When in the society of the man she loved, his influence unfolded the closed petals of her heart as the sun kisses back the white leaves of the daisy, and uncovers its great golden centre to the eyes of all men. ”

“ Of all cruel griefs endured by Millicent Almsford, this was the most bitter,--that her lover, through her fault, should be misjudged; that in the eyes of others he should suffer. She realized now in what a light he had appeared to Galbraith, to Hal and Barbara, to all the small circle who had seen their friendship flower into love, and that flower tossed to the earth before it had ripened to its fruition. His sudden disappearance, her own too obvious grief, to what could they attribute it but to his faithlessness? ”

“ Millicent hums the refrain to herself, and answers pleasantly to the noisy greeting with which one of the party hails them. A young girl, with the red-gold hair of her people, turns and looks long into Millicent's face. She wears over her broad shoulders a leopard-skin for warmth; while her head, with its glorious crown of hair, has no other protection than the doubtful one of a garland of roses. As she looks at Millicent, she takes the fragrant wreath from her brow, and, with a graceful salutation, tosses it into the gondola. ”

“ Millicent's dreamy face, radiant with hope and love, smiled at him from the arms of the lover who now stood, half crazed with grief, gazing at the ruin before him.
The young sculptor stood beside him, full of a sympathy he knew not how to express. At last he spoke:--
"Graham, look up, and do not grieve for what is past help. I tell you, man, that your greatest picture stands before you. The Lovers has the one quality which your work has heretofore missed. It is human, it is full of natural sentiment. ”

“ HONORED MISTRESS DEERING,--I lay myself at your feet, and with myself a pretty bit of game I have just killed, thinking that the fair Venetian might fancy a venison steak for her breakfast. I kiss your hand, dear my lady, and am your most unworthy but loyal servitor,
JOHN GRAHAM.
"Of course, knew it was Graham, queer creature. Wonder why he did not stop and take breakfast with us. He is an unaccountable fellow."
"What did you call him?"
"Graham; his full name is John Douglass Graham. Just like a hero's in a novel. But Graham never does anything very heroic, I fancy." ”

“ It was late that night when the soft-footed nun who was Millicent's nurse laid her patient on her couch, with a gentle reproof for her wilfulness in being so wakeful.
"But it was not my fault, my sister; I could not sleep earlier. Now I am better and shall rest." She smiled in the quiet face which bent over her under its snow-white coif of linen. The heavy gold-bronze hair was not plaited that night, Millicent was so tired. The sister smoothed it tenderly over the pillow, her hard fingers thrilling at the touch of so much beauty. ”

“ Beside her on the floor lay a small parchment book, ivory-clasped,--"The Sonnets of Petrarch." Her eyes were fixed on the panel over the mantel shelf, but they saw more than the artist had pictured with brush and color: a waking day dream of her home as she had last seen it, and ah! how much sweeter an imagining of how she might next see it,--with what surroundings, with what companionship! O blessed dream-castles of women, in which all the cares and privations of life are forgotten; in which there is never a weariness or a pain; where lonely watching is succeeded by joyous reunion ”

“ Graham did not succeed in that important branch of art: the individual had little interest for him; men and women absorbed him less than nature. Every tree and brooklet, dead forest leaf or purpled thunder-cloud, held for him a lesson. Men and women seen from a distance were more likely to interest him than those with whom he was thrown in close contact. When their lives and actions were viewed in an impersonal perspective, he understood them better, and often theorized about them. His thoughts were oftener occupied with people of whom he knew little than with his friends and intimates. ”

“ She had done more: she had made for herself a friend of a discouraged lover, a champion who would fight her battles to the death; and she had bound a gentle, loving woman's heart to her own by an indissoluble tie. She had striven only to exonerate John Graham; and she had made Maurice Galbraith glad that he loved her, though hopelessly and passionately; she had filled Barbara Deering with the deepest sentiment which woman can hold for sister woman,--a compassionate love. ”

“ Henry Deering was the speaker.
"Of course I like him. I told you I should, from the moment you described his queer tower and his solitary life to me. I always like people who have something to characterize them and set them apart from the mere dead-level rank and file of mediocrity," answered Millicent.
"But may not a hermit like Graham be mediocre like everybody else?"
"No, the fact of his living alone does not make him interesting; but he would not live alone if he were like everybody else. Ordinary people all herd together." ”

“ What a chance was here for the woman whose love was now breaking over his frozen life with warmth, fragrance, and beauty! How grand an opportunity to sweeten by truth and faith all that had grown bitter from untruth and faithlessness! If she could only have known him as he was, have understood him and his past, before she had loved him, what could not Millicent have accomplished! Alas! poor child, she knew nothing of all this. Her own past was black with a grief and wrong greater than that which he had borne. ”

“ The henchman returning with the wine, Graham filled the crystal goblet and the humble cup to the brim, and together these two denizens of the balmy forest drank to the new day which had dawned on the young man's life. After the long, black night which for months obscures the face of nature in the far northern land, the first rising of the sun touches the hearts of men with a deeper, more profound joy than the dwellers in a temperate zone can well understand. ”

“ The sky smiles from spring to laughing summer, and the land lies steeped in sunshine through the late autumn.
The wide white beach, with its row of bathing-houses and little tents, was very attractive to Millicent. She sometimes sat in the warm sand for hours, chatting with Barbara or making friends with the bare-legged children, the tireless architects in sand. Finally, donning their bathing-suits, they ran, hand in hand, over the dry sands, across the wet space which the last wave had darkened, through the white fringe of the sea, into the cool green billows. ”

“ Living among people to whom her beauty, her talent, and her warmth of heart had been the most poetic features of their lives, Barbara Deering had grown to value men and women according to the amount of good or pleasure she could impart to them. Her life had been one wherein the tears and sighs had been stifled, or hidden in the darkness of her chamber; the laughter and smiles, the bright cheery face, the helping hand always meeting those about her. Children loved her, and old people blessed her for her sympathy and kindness. ”

“ John Douglass Graham, by birth American, by descent Scottish, by profession painter, sat looking out from his tower window. It was too dark to paint, and not yet late enough for him to light his study lamp and begin his evening work; so he sat idle, a rare thing for him. Before his window there stretched a fair landscape; and a man, a painter above other men, might well be forgiven an hour's idleness in such a place. The sun's last rays made the little copse look more golden and dreamy than did the stronger morning light. ”

“ I, who have lived a Venetian, shall die an American."
"And yet--?"
"And yet I am glad to--do not be shocked, kind friend, if I say that I am glad to die in my own Venice where I was born. I have two selves. One was born and nurtured here under the shadow of the silent palaces; the other sprang up full-grown among the madrone trees of San Rosario. The two have warred and struggled here; their battle-ground has been my breast, and the new self conquered the old; but the victory will be short-lived."
Galbraith looked at her intently. ”

“ The half-finished portrait of Mrs. Patrick Shallop looked at him with one reproachful eye from the easel; but Graham paid no heed to the neglected portrait; he was deeply engrossed in pursuing his thought and preserving it in a tangible shape. It is a rare thing, in this age of the worship of the golden calf, for the artist even to be absorbed in the love of his profession. Of old, it seems that the sages and the sculptors wrought and thought for the sake of art and learning, the spur of ambition being all that was necessary to urge them forward. ”

“ After a pause, "Millicent, I think we have made a mistake, you and I. We cannot help each other, and therefore we hinder one another. You dazzle me with your beauty, and send me back to my work unfitted for it; while I only make you unhappy, and fear I can never do anything else."
"Graham, you kill me." She looked indeed as if a blow had been planted in her breast, as she reeled, all white and trembling, to a seat. ”

“ To her simple mind the thought that suicide is sinful could never have occurred. She might not follow the man she loved; she believed that the soul now prisoned in her breast might always be near him; so she opened the cage and let the bird fly."
"You speak as seriously as if you had known the Smile of the Morning and sympathized with her."
"It is the privilege of those who have greatly suffered, that the grief of others can be felt and understood by them." Millicent spoke absently, dreamily, checking her speech at the pained expression which her words brought to Galbraith's face. ”

“ It is such a terrible responsibility, the taking of life; can man's law make it guiltless? The great question which all of modern thought has not yet solved, troubled the mind of the young woman, who could accept no judgment or creed on faith; she painfully and laboriously solved the problems of life by the force of her own reasoning.
"There is Pierson, the counsel for the defence," whispered Hal, as a little man strutted up the aisle between the benches full of people, and entered the green-railed enclosure. He was perhaps the most grotesque-looking person Millicent had ever seen. ”

“ The wide terrace which surrounded the house, with its bright parterres of flowers, and the pleasant piazza, with roof and pillars like a Norman cloister, were, however, wonderfully attractive. Beyond the close-clipped emerald lawn was seen the ocean, whose white curling waves danced merrily in the unbroken sunshine.
The guests found Mrs. Shallop awaiting them in a long dim drawing-room. She was a skimpy pattern of feminality, with a pitiful, pinched face, great sad-looking eyes, colorless, sandy hair, and a thin, angular body. ”

“ Ferrara was greatly elated by Barbara's having driven down to the station to meet him; and Millicent seemed, for the first time since her arrival at the Ranch, to be thoroughly alive and awake. Her pale cheek was softly flushed, the color shining through the luminous skin like the fire of an opal seen beneath its milky veil. Her eyes, usually deep and earnest, but without great animation, were lit by a flame which was not reflected from the firelight. Barbara was happy because those about her were so. ”

“ It is a terrible thing to look upon one who is dear to us in sleep. Even when the countenance shadows forth holy dreams, it is awful to watch its still composure, so like death, and to feel that impassable distance between the unfettered soul and our own earth-bound spirit,--that distance which, but for the briefest spaces, is never bridged over in our whole lives, though they flow quietly side by side through peaceful days and happy nights.
Though the man had closed his eyes in the knowledge that it was entirely safe for him to sleep in Graham's presence, his slumber was not an easy one. ”

“ Graham's heart leaped from its quiet beating into a very tumult of pulsations, as the bolt was gradually drawn and the heavy door swung slowly open. On the threshold of his lonely tower stood Millicent, with downcast eyes and pale face. For a moment he was silent, looking at her, doubting his own vision; fearing to move lest she should vanish from before his eager eyes as she did in his dreams. Could this beautiful, colorless creature, with marble cheeks and fallen lids, with sombre garments and nerveless, pallid hands crossed upon the breast, be Millicent Almsford? ”

“ There is no room for me in this great New World, where all are so busy and have so much work to do. The few beauties which they have, their blue skies and grand hills, they neither understand nor love. They have no time to look back into the glorious past with its memories; they know not how to seize the present with its actualities; they live and toil ever for the future, which they will not live to see. ”

“ Dear, dreamy Venice, where great vices and greater virtues have flourished more grandly than anywhere else in the world! And now it is all past, her glory and her pain; and knowing this, we make the best of the pleasant things left to us. We steep ourselves in her rich beauty, content with its perfection; we con over her mysterious legends, and forget that other nations are living, striving, working, and making their histories, while we are dreaming and playing our lives away. Your great Saxon virtue, 'Truth,' is meaningless to us; we are content with Beauty. ”