thrown scornfully back, and a vacant look in her large black eyes, as though utterly unconscious of the intense gaze which the young man fixed upon her. There was a strange contrast between the two. He was pale and listless, and stood humbly at the door; all his energies of soul and body seemed absorbed to feed that burning look. She was in the very flush and freshness of maidenhood, and reposed before him like one basking luxuriously in her warm, glad existence. Every pulse thrilled with vigor; her whole form was glowing with strength and buoyant life. Her arms were bathed in the ruddy firelight, which half revealed their exquisite swell, and marked with faint shadows the sinews knitting strongly at the wrist. Her black hair glanced with a purple sheen to the flickering blaze, and the color in her cheek shone vividly, or turned to a dusky glow, at every change of the uncertain flame.

Come in, Harry, and shut the door,' she said, abruptly rousing herself. You can fill that great German pipe of yours over my hearth; I am very lonely to-night, and want something to make sport of."

Harry crept into the room with a noiseless step, and drawing a chair toward the wood fire, now crumbling fast away to a bed of glowing embers, began slowly to replenish the bowl of a huge meerschaum, grotesquely carved, which he supported between his knees. The exhilaration produced by the frosty air had passed away, and left him careworn and almost dejected.

'Are you angry with me, Kate?' he asked at length in a low voice. 'Yes, I am,' retorted the girl, 'I cannot bear to be flattered; and you talk to me sometimes of my own face and figure as if I had no more feeling or sense than the little images in your painting room. I was not made to be a plaything for gentlemen.'

'I do not pretend to be a gentleman-in your sense of the word,' said Harry. I work day and night wearily enough to earn a living. I say day and night; for when I have been engraving or designing all day I lie awake half the night, imagining some new combination, and building castles in the air, which must be substantial enough to be turned to account. It is a business which withers away body and soul. Even my imagination begins to have a sickly hue; but there is a battle before me, in which I must win or die. The world gives no quarter to a man once down, who is fighting with it for life.'

'Still you are a gentleman,' persisted the girl, rising and advancing toward the fire. Your hand is softer than my own. It is only fit to carry a pencil or a brush. I am a girl; yet there is more strength in my arm than yours.'

She took his hand as she spoke and placed it where he might feel that her slender arm would scarcely dimple to the touch, but seemed, in its marble firmness, like the flesh of the statue in the old story, when it was just softening into life at the sculptor's prayer. There was a contemptuous familiarity about this action; she did not seem to look upon him as a man.

You are so quiet,' she continued impatiently, tossing his hand aside; 'you walk about as if you were afraid of crushing a flower at every step. You never speak above your breath. You seem always to have

There is no life about you.

something which you keep to yourself.
I do not understand it, and it provokes me.'

Harry made no answer, for he had long despaired of being comprehended. The twilight deepened in the room, and shadowy phantoms, exulting over the dying fire, stole up the wall and darted in stealthy frolic across the ceiling. The clock ticked loudly from its corner, as though it parted reluctantly with the midnight moments, and meant to lay an emphasis on every one.

Do you ever dream in the daytime, Kate?' said Harry; 'I mean when you are wide awake?'

'Not often; I am too busy living. Sometimes, on a long summer day, when the air comes through the window on my cheek, I sit and forget my sewing for a long while, thinking of nothing, but just feeling happy. All manner of pleasant images pass through my mind then, like the sparkling things in the sunbeam.'

But you are forced to gain a subsistence, and toil for it, like myself,' said Harry. Now have you never made a picture of yourself in some different situation; as a lady, for instance, who was rich and had servants to wait upon her, lived in a fine house, and so on?'

Never!' she answered emphatically; 'I would not be a lady if I had the choice. They are poor weak, sickly things. A draught of cold air kills them, like a geranium. They are helpless creatures, and must have some one to lean upon always; some one to look after their health and take care of their characters. Now I have neither father nor mother, nor friends in the world; yet I would not quit this little room, and give up the feeling that I need thank no one for help or protection - no, not for a fortune!'

I am an orphan and friendless, like you, Kate,' said the young man, speaking more to himself than to her, and I am glad of it. There is a grim pleasure in plodding on doggedly, with starvation at your back and fame a great way before you in the distance. I am getting a name, you must know, as an artist. They come to me now to design the illustrations for the novels of the day. It is absolute drudgery, however, to extract the characters from some of these books, and harder still to fit a face and body to them.'

eye.

He sighed, but there was an intense gleam of pride deep in his Could I help you in any way?' said the girl, earnestly and kindly. The best help you could give,' he replied, startled by her change of manner, would be merely to sit still now and then, and let me draw from your face and copy your figure. You are the most perfect model of girlhood that could be found, and your complexion is the clear brunette, with which a painter seldom meets.'

Kate's eye flashed, and she seemed disposed to quarrel again with his language.

'I should paint you as Esmeralda, the dancing girl, in Victor Hugo's novel,' continued he, musing aloud, and I should be the student, who loved so madly.'

'You mean in 'Our Lady of Paris,'' answered Kate, quickly; 'I have read that book. It kept me up all night, and came to a miserable end at last. But I am not like Esmeralda. She was only a pretty

fool, and the student was almost an idiot. He should have joined the army and put on uniform, to take her fancy, instead of talking Greek to her, and making love with a dictionary. I hope that I am not like Esmeralda.'

Harry was astonished; for he had no idea that she ever read any thing; and he was always under the impression that even his ordinary language was often unintelligible to her. Her engrossing beauty, her animal vigor, had been to him all the soul in her form; he did not care to look for a deeper intelligence. It was her physical excellence which domineered over his feebler nature with a wild fascination.

'You are the student in the novel,' said Kate, thoughtfully.

'But not exactly, for you move around quietly and mope in corners, looking miserable, like the cat there; but all the while you have set your mind upon something, just as she has, and will pass through fire for it when you think it time to make the spring. I see into you a little way. But that student had nothing in him. Love made him crazy, to be sure, but he was always weaker than a child. He seems to me like a man delirious with fever, who needs to be held down in his bed but could not walk one step alone.'

'I will sit to you, Harry, if it will be any assistance. You must not of course make a portrait.'

I will try to avoid it,' said the bewildered young man. 'It will be difficult, since even now in your absence, all my designs of the female face turn to your likeness.'

'Nonsense, Harry!' exclaimed Kate, haughtily; instantly resuming her ineffable air of disgust and indifference. Then she began to torment him with a girlish wantonness of cruelty which is the very instinct of the sex. She revelled before him in her beautiful being, with a mocking, luxurious triumph which maddened him.'

This would make a picture, Harry,' she said, loosing the fastening of her hair which poured down at once in black shining waves over her neck and shoulders even to her feet. Then assuming in an instant the frank, half sisterly manner which was hardest of all to bear, she compelled the miserable slave with throbbing pulse, to assist her in restoring the thick tresses to their place. Again she was all sympathy; and thus she racked his soul, binding it down to the torture by her wonderful beauty, while every word and gesture made more bitter the despair already cankering in his heart. He could bear it no longer. He rose from the chair like one uplifting a great weight, and strode hastily toward the door. He was arrested by the girl's hand laid gently on his shoulder.

Will you not bid me

like Esmeralda ?'

good night, Harry, and confess that I am not

He bowed in silence, and shuddering under her touch, passed out.

CHAPTER SECOND.

In the solitude of his own room, Harry threw himself upon the bed, with a delicious feeling of coming rest. He had now about him a world

of his own, whose scenery and inhabitants were all at his command. The feverish misery, the continual humiliation of his strange passion faded from his remembrance as, disposing the coverings around him so as to defy the frosty night, he sat still dressed, half upright on his couch, gazing at the little pool of moonlight on the floor.

Careering about the huge building, the fitful autumn wind roared like a distant lion in a desert, or trailed with a ghostly, rushing sound, along the passage-ways, and went forth moaning and wandering far away into the empty night. Still, as Harry sat listening and dreaming, one form would return again and again, wavering dimly in the smoke of the meerschaum. It would be dispersed for a little while by the force of his strong will, and break away into the features of ideal women, only to come on him unawares, with a reproachful look, and a presence more exacting than before.

She is a glorious specimen of physical beauty, an embodiment of the sex in all its attributes;' he thought to himself, regarding Kate, in his reverie, with comparative coolness. She is a finer animal than a deer or a leopard. Would that I might for an instant feel the blood bound through my veins as it must bound through hers; that I might know the ecstasy of mere existence, in which she seems so to delight; that I might look through her eyes at the sky and earth; and that my soul might live and sleep and dream, wrapped up in so beautiful a body.' He pondered long upon this odd conceit.

'I suppose,' he thought on more dreamily,' that this is the lesson taught by the old allegory of Cupid and Psyche, where the winged soul is imploring an embrace from the laughing boy, who is a veritable child of earth. I have learned to-night that Kate has unusual intelligence; but the discovery gives me no pleasure. It seems to mar the idea of her upon which I dwell most fondly. My soul seems yearning, like Psyche, not for communion with another soul, ethereal as itself, but for intimacy with a material thing, in whose fresh and heathful atmosphere it may revive and rest. That is the metaphysics of this affair.'

And now, despite of his philosophy, feeling an approaching fit of wretchedness, and exerting his peculiar dogged strength of will, for his timidity was only physical, he drove away the subject and turned to his

art.

But undefined, dilating images began to fill the moonlit chamber; the wind whispered mysteriously and ceased altogether; he lapsed into a dream; roused up and sank again; then determined to remain awake, and in the peaceful consciousness of a good resolution, fell fast asleep.

It was the sudden, deep oblivion which comes upon youth when melancholy and overtasked. A wreath of smoke was curling upward from the great meerschaum at the moment. As the stem dropped from his parting lips, and the grasp of his hand relaxed, the capacious bowl turned over in the bed and the silver-lid flew open, sliding over its heated brim came a shower of grey ashes, followed by a sodden, glowing coal which began to sink into the sleeper's couch, gnawing through one covering after another, and sending up a thin vapor as it burned its way.

Harry stirred uneasily from time to time, and the coverings, which

had been wrapped around him, slipped by degrees away, and lay presently, a smouldering heap upon the floor. There was no outlet for the increasing smoke, and the air soon began to grow thick and stifling, until the moonbeams streamed through a ghastly haze, which became each moment more palpable. Still he slept on; but his sleep was like that of a man struggling with some hideous night-mare. As time passed, his breathing began to labor painfully, and his features were sharpened with a look of helplessness and great misery. It was curious to watch the slow progress of the fire, which, without breaking into flame, was beginning to extend its glimmering rings, as if it were searching for a wider foothold. The deadly vapor rising from it, gently approached the sleeper, hovering over him with stupifying wings like a vampyre, and draining imperceptibly the energies of life, so that at last in his weakness and the confusion of awaking, one suffocating pang might perhaps disable him altogether. It is strange that a man should permit himself to be strangled by inches in his sleep; but it is certain that men sometimes do permit it.

There was a stir in the silent house, and a hurrying footfall. In the twinkling of an eye the door of the room was dashed open from without, the night wind rushed in, eddying amid the gloom, and Kate stood at the threshold, with dishevelled hair and a look of unspeakable horror in her face. It was but an instant ere she sprang fearlessly into the dusky chamber, calling Harry by name in a tone so clear and piercing, that the whole building rang and reëchocd. He murmured something inarticulately, but the sound served to guide her in the haze, and she was by his side at a single bound. He was lying completely dressed, as he had fallen asleep. She first touched his hand; it was cold and clammy. She drew back shuddering, then calling to her help the great vigor concealed in her slight form and rounded limbs, she threw her arms about him and dragged him at one effort unceremoniously from the bed. He had the ill grace to groan, as if uneasy at the fall, but the resolute girl gave him no time to remonstrate. Exerting all her strength, she drew him, now feebly struggling, forth into the passage-way, and without pausing in her activity, threw open the window, and dashed water in his face, which was distorted by that poisonous sleep. With pain and bewilderment his senses gradually collected, but his throat was parched by an intolerable thirst, and he was benumbed and giddy. Kate strained him to her bosom in one impetuous embrace, and hurried to extinguish the fire. She returned, flushed and anxious. She crouched down beside Harry, who had gained a sitting posture, but was still very weak, and drew his head upon her shoulder, with her warm young arms around his neck.

What has happened, Kate?' he whispered huskily; I feel as if I had passed through a long illness.'

Do not speak to me, Harry, just yet!'

He felt her bosom heave with a passionate sob, and a tear-drop fell upon his forehead. The blood shot tingling through his frame.

'Oh, Harry!' she answered, 'in a little while you would have been strangled in the smoke. If I had not been awake, the room itself would soon have taken fire, and, by that time you would have lost all strength