comfortably—that is, I have all I want. | she drank most gladly of the Hebrus I used to fish in a loch hard by, but I when its waters were dyed with blood. have given that up; the game is not worth the candle, for fish is not nourishing in proportion to its bulk; and why should I disturb the trout? I don't wish to annoy even my humblest neighbors. I don't think man will ever shake off his primeval barbarism till he sits down to a 'guiltless feast.'" "People say so; but remember that the animals have never been consulted on the question. And observe that our finer feelings are at variance with our practice. Conceive the absurdity of this the poet in a lyric mood goes forth on a fair May morn and sits him down, and makes a dainty little canzonet about the lambkins frisking on the mead; then he goes home and dines on roast lamb and mint sauce. I wonder he is not ashamed to look the poor creatures in the face. Would you eat a fowl if you had to wring its neck?". "I suppose not." Well, but if you eat it, you are par ticeps criminis." "But a case might arise when you must either kill or be killed. What if you met a tiger in the jungle?" "I might be attacked by a robber, and have to kill or disable him to preserve my own life. It does not follow that I am to run amuck among my fellow-creatures." "Well, but why should you kill dangerous animals any more than domesticated ones? Nature made them so. After all, a tiger burning bright in the forest of the night,' is as much entitled to respect as a lamb." "It is a hard question; but I will give you my answer in the form of an apologue, as the divine Plato used to do." He paused, and a whimsical but pleasant smile lit up his features. "Once upon a time Cybele, the ancient mother, was roaming through the woods of Thrace drawn in a chariot by her two tigers, for she loved her fierce children and the sombre woods, the home of slaughter and swift death, and But lo! in the midst of the path she came upon a naked Boy, who stood and gazed fearlessly upon her, and took the tigers by the mane and held them undismayed. And the Dread Mother descended from her chariot slowly and with half-sorrowful, half-glad resignation, for she knew that her reign was over; and coming to the Boy she laid her hand upon his arching brow, and said in low and faltering tones, and the winds from Rhodope sighed as she spoke, and the tigers growled sullenly like the sound of departing thunder: Thou art come at last, bright offspring of the Dawn, a nobler Phoebus. 'Tis thine to wield the power I have used and abused. This superfluity and rank overgrowth of life has been an incessant care to me, and ravening tooth and claw, pestilence and famine, coupled like my tigers here, have been my only remedies. But I grow old and am weary of slaughter. Here in thy fair brow resides a power greater than tooth and claw, and pestilence and famine. Use it well, for Reason can never be cruel. Destroy the relics of my former sway, slay the slayer, defeat organic death, chase the lion to its lair, the viper to its hole. I appoint you keeper of my wide domains; check this hot foison of life, aml keep it within bounds. Let the mouth keep pace with the blades of grass. For if thou slay, as I have ever slain since the mists cleared off the face of chaos, then thou art not the Deliverer, and a mightier than thou, mightier because more merciful, One foreshadowed in every peaceful sunset, in every stilly dawn, in cloudless sky and waveless sea, shall come and supplant thee, as the dragons of the old weltering world have been supplanted.' So saying, she took off her towered diadem, and put it on his head and kissed him with her wrinkled lips. Then mounting her chariot anew and lashing her cowering and chap-fallen tigers with her bloody whip, all intertwined with piercing claws and jagged teeth, disappeared in the ancient wood, never more to return." Evelyn had listened to him with "It is a singular reflection that parted lips and a deep, intent look of boundless interest; and when he had ceased she sighed softly, and passed her hand across her brow. Then after a pause she said, "It was worth my while to be storm-stayed to listen to all this." He gave a low laugh, and slightly waved his hand. 66 "I must see if the storm abates," he said, and going to the door opened it. The wind charged with snow came whirling in. In this somewhat sheltered situation the roar of the storm was subdued, but the blast could be heard trumpeting amid the distant hills. "Your conveyance, Miss Markham, is quite buried in the snow," he said. "You need not look for deliverance to-night." "Well, well," she replied, "à la guerre comme à la guerre. And I can make myself very comfortable in this armchair." "Oh, but you shall have Flora's room. It will be a pleasure for her to do this slight service, for she has all a Highland woman's respect for gentlefolks." "Pray don't inconvenience her or yourself. I could doze quite comfortably in this chair. I am not fastidious." She took out a tiny watch and looked at it. "No cooking is the main occupation of most households,” he remarked. sooner has the lady of the house got up than the shades of her prison-house begin to gather round her. The freshness and hopefulness and inspiration of the morning are expunged by the thought-what is to be for dinner today? Say, shall it be beef or mutton, and how transmuted, garnished, bedevilled? Pièces de résistance indeed! Let us steadfastly resist them, Miss Markham. I protest woman gets cooked and very much overdone in this broiling atmosphere. And then when she has been simmered away into a gelatinous state, her husband finds that she is not intellectual enough for him. Rest assured no heavenly irradiation can penetrate this greasy steam." Evelyn laughed gaily, and then rising she walked across the apartment to the bookcase with a simplicity and, as it were, domestic ease that inwardly charmed Casanove. "You permit me ?" she said, as she ran her eyes over the backs of the volumes. "By all means." "Much of this is too learned for me," she remarked, with a slight shrug. "And for me, too, unless in my more strenuous moods. But it is well to have books that embody an aspiration and remind you of your vows. Plato, for example - I don't often read him, but his presence rebukes my meaner thoughts." "You are a philosopher, Mr. Casanove. As for me," she said, with a tinge of sadness, "I am a creature of convention without any faith in convention. All my paper-boats have gone down the stream.' "" short She walked slowly back to her seat, and seemed to sink into a somewhat melancholy reverie. After a while she shook her head impatiently and looked at her host. "Have you lived here long? Do you intend to live here all your life? Why have you forsaken society? But perhaps these are impertinent questions.' "Given a certain degree of friendship -and friendship may grow rapidly — | edition, and so we have a library which they are most pertinent." "You have been in the army," she remarked, glancing at the sabre over the bookcase. “Yes, in the French army. I served as a volunteer under General Faidherbe during the Franco-Prussian war." "What! you fought for democratic France? the country of plebiscites, of universal suffrage, tempered by revolution and directed by political boulevardism ?' “Well, I am a descendant of a Huguenot family, for one thing. And I don't like the latter-day Goths, the scientific Orsons of modern Europe." contains many rarities; another collected paintings and engravings, and so forth. Oh, yes, dear old Daventry Hall has been my Academe, my college, my shrine and sanctuary.” She leaned back in the chair and meditatively clasped her hands behind her head, manifestly quite unconscious of the graceful and charming attitude. "I perceive," said Austin, after a while, "that you have made a fetish of your family abode. I quite understand your feelings; but you should, I think, resist them. We should sit loosely 'to our surroundings. We are pilgrims, and should have as little scrip and scrip "And you killed a few Orsons, I sup- page as possible. To be too much atpose." "Oh, we were beaten, but we did our best, Miss Markham. I give you warning that I am not a benevolent being. Benevolence is often a kind of lazy purring in the sun. I wish people well -out of the world, if need be. Fair play first and philanthropy afterwards! No, I don't regret my campaigning. I have seen noble deaths and soul-satisfying extinctions." "I wonder how long it would take to understand you, Mr. Casanove," marked Evelyn, with a smile. tached to any person is bad; to be anchored to a house is worse. We should grow on the surface, and not have to be pulled up shrieking like mandrakes." "How long have you been here, Mr. Casanove? Two years; and I think it is nearly time to change my horizon. I detect a sameness in my thoughts and feelings which is ominous. As for family associations, they are very pleasant and inre-teresting, but we have got to live our own life, and our own experiences are "Perhaps we wish too much to un- more valuable to us than all these derstand each other. Perhaps we should mouldy records. Let us get rid of go on revealing ourselves to the very lumber, inherited lumber particularly. end, and leave the world with unguessed Why should a thing be respectable bepotentialities. Curiosity is not neces- cause it is old? unless it be old because sarily love of knowledge. I feel as if it is respectable. Happy is the man the globe would not be quite so inter- who has no grandfather, because he esting if the North Pole were discov- does not feel bound to pay him deferered. Well, now, donnant donnant, ence. But if your grandfather was a pray tell me something about yourself." Oh, I have been a mere lichen growing on a wall. But it has been a pleasant wall; for the house where I was born is very old, very quaint, and very beautiful. Then my ancestors have left a bit of their character in it, and so modified my character and tastes. One was a musician, and so he constructed an organ-chamber; another was a Nimrod, and the spoils of the chase adorn many a corner; another was a book-lover, and compassed sea and land to make a proselyte of a first 66 Quaker or a Papist, or an indurated Tory or a vaporous Radical, you are apt to have a leaning that way. It is hard enough to get the grandfather out of our blood without binding him upon our back. Don't let us cast our nativity backwards. Orion shines for me as it did for Meno or Ptolemy. Why bind the sweet influences of the Pleiads? Life was meant to be for you and me a perpetual discovery.” "Well, for a groping and tottering child like me it is pleasant to have my shadowy ancestors leading me by the hand. Apropos of music, I see you play on the flute. Will you not play a little?" delightful, she thought, to waken with the flesh cool and the heart warm! Innocence is justified by the freshness of every dawn. She dressed herself leisurely, and came down the little, creaking, wooden stair. When she entered the kitchen-parlor she found Mr. Casanove reading aloud to Flora, who was bending over the fire, preparing a simple breakfast. What he read seemed to be Gaelic from its wealth of gut "With pleasure, though I am but an indifferent player. Still, I love the flute. It is a business-like instrument, without arrière-pensée, while your violin is a moody enfant du siècle, an impassioned pessimist, if the paradox is not too glaring, even in its gayest humor full of overtones of sadness. The flute, on the other hand, is as brisk and cheer-turals. He greeted Evelyn with calm ful as a morning breeze, or if plaintive, and gentle cordiality, and placed a chair never morbid; it is sweet without be- for her. ing luscious, lively without hysterics, an instrument for alert pedestrians not for lotus-eaters. It has even an air of grotesqueness and latent humor which is diverting. The very triviality of screwing it together and blowing through it excludes artifice and affectation, whereas the tuning of a violin is a serious, indeed almost a solemn act." "The storm is over," he said ; "I think your imprisonment draws to an end. I have dug your conveyance out of the snow, and cleared a portion of the road, so you will be able to get a little walking exercise." "How very kind and thoughtful of you!" she said gratefully. "My motives were mixed," he re Evelyn laughed gaily at the whimsical plied; "I need a good deal of exercise description, and he smiled responsively. in the open air. And now for break"Well, I shall play you Beethoven's fast.” arrangement, with variations, of Kind, willst du ruhig schlafen. May it prove a happy presage. You know German, I suppose?" "All but the genders," was the smil ing reply, "but I like the language." "Yes, it will be very nice when it gets a literature," remarked Casanove, so gravely that Evelyn laughed again. When had she felt so happy? She listened to his playing, which, without being masterly, was expert and pleasant; and there were intervals of conversation gay or thoughtful, till she felt a little tired and sleepy, and he left her to arrange with Flora about her quarters for the night. The bedroom was small, but delightfully clean and tidy, and she had hardly laid her head on her pillow when she sank into a dreamless sleep. When she woke next morning she had the blissful sensation of having enjoyed a sleep so profound and so refreshing that it transcended mere physical repose, and was a kind of fresh reconciliation with life. Her feeling of tranquility had been supreme, and the howling of the wind had only lulled her senses and deepened her content. How The three people took their places at the table. Flora closed her eyes and folded her hands, and seemed to be repeating inwardly a grace, which Casanove respected by his attitude of silent gravity. The meal despatched, Evelyn proposed to go out, and she hastily put on some wraps. Issuing into the open air, she found the carriage standing clear of the snow which had enveloped it. The air was still keen though no longer harsh, and the wind had fallen dead. Side by side with Casanove, she paced to and fro the track which he had cleared in the snow. They chatted together like old friends, and Evelyn was probably more expansive than her companion; for his manner was consistently shaded with an air of respectful aloofness and reserve, which indicated how he interpreted his duties as a host brought into unconventional relations with a lady guest. was astonishing how much they found to talk about. Even the social themes that she touched upon at times seemed to interest him, though he generally referred them to vast and, as it were, cosmic principles, and his line of com It easily ment took a parabolic sweep into ethe-poverty? With your talents you could real regions haunted by Platonic ideas and prototypes. Once, after a long pause, Evelyn remarked half timidly, My "Pardon me, Miss Markham, but I happen to be ridiculously rich. only justification, indeed, for possessing "You indicated last night that you so much wealth, is my ability to do did not intend to remain much longer without it. But you were going to tell here. If you come as far south as Lon-me something, if I do not mistake." don, my father and I shall be very "Yes. You call me Berenice, not pleased to see you. Daventry Hall is quite near Guildford." "I am extremely obliged; but it is not likely that we shall meet again,” he replied calmly, but with a wistful look. She was conscious of quite a sudden pang of disappointment. "I am sorry to hear that," she said lightly. " My father is highly cultivated as a man of letters; he held a diplomatic post at one time; and you would find his conversation very agreeable. Both indeed would be gainers, and I would sit in a corner and follow the strange evolutions of a talk between an accomplished man of the world and an idealist." that I know who she was; but you will suppose that Berenice is speaking. You must know that she was betrothed to | her cousin Hector. He was an orphan, her father's ward, and he and she were brought up together like brother and sister. He was an amiable and charming youth, handsome, high-bred, generous; and Berenice had a warm and sisterly affection for him. He became a soldier. But, alas! he went too often to the Olympic games, and staked his money heavily. How sorry she was, and how she pled with him! He, too, was full of remorse and contrition, but still he returned to his fatal habits, till his patrimony was sadly diminished. "I, too, was once a man of the Now Berenice was very grieved, and world," he rejoined gravely. "Per-wondered if it were wise to marry him; haps I am but a half-converted hermit for if he as a lover was so forgetful of after all. Let us, however, be satisfied himself and of her, what would he be with the short and pleasant meeting as a husband? How could she be which the gods have conspired to grant happy, if she could not trust her husus, and which I am not likely soon to band? Now what do you say to forget, for such planets seldom swim that?" into my ken. I shall think most of you when you have become a myth to me. Take comfort, if you need it; you shall be planted like Berenice in the heavens, and I shall see your tresses now and then when my sky is clear." She remained silent for a while, mechanically twisting her engagement ring round her finger. "You say you won't see me again," she resumed, looking suddenly up, with a shade of reproach in her hazel eyes. "Won't' is too personal, too full of velléité. Still the probability exists that we shall not meet again. Ere long I go to Brittany. I am studying the Celtic tongues. You see I am originally a Celt myself." "Pray excuse me again, but women can't help being curious. Why should you condemn yourself to this voluntary "Did Hector love Berenice?" he asked, with a quaint smile. "What did Berenice know of love ?" she replied.impetuously. He was silent for a while. "I think she should have married him," he said seriously. "A betrothal is a sacred thing. No happiness was ever built upon a broken vow. And if duty brings pain, it is an exquisite pain, not to be bartered for happiness. I have felt, for example, a wild delight as I roamed over the hills in stormy weather with a shrivelled and tingling skin, but a warm and bounding heart, and thoughts as merry as morris-dancers in my brain. We have no right to grieve for anything save our own misdoing. Never weep for anything save a lost ideal." "How selfish and individual that |