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right, and the straw was clean, so Tony gladly accepted the refuge, which he shared with three Murillolike shepherd boys, and who kept their respectful distance, staring and grinning at him as though he were a waxwork.

Presently came a rustling, a quick footstep outside, and enter, brusquely, another refugee. "Ianthe!" "Tony!"

Of course they did not venture the Christian names aloud. But from the very first they had never once thought of each other as Miss Lee and Mr. Sebright.

This second apparition was too much for the Murillo peasant boys. Their eyes grew as round as saucers as they gaped stupidly at the girl, whose beauty struck even them with a dim wonder and sense of admiration.

"We met; 'twas in a manger," said Tony, laughing, as they shook hands. Ianthe laughed too, and allowed him to relieve her of her wet cloak.

"I've been playing hide and seek with the storm,' ," said she, "till it caught me. My father told me it was coming."

"And Ichabod told me,' said Tony. "I pretended not to think So, but secretly hoped he was right. Ah, come here and look."

She stood in the doorway, which commanded a fine view of the forest and glacier.

"I like this," said she "Can you not see the wind swooping down from the Riffel? How mad the firs will be when it catches them - Look there!" and the lightning flashed in the wood.

It was Jupiter's holiday on the mountain. Only the poor shadows and echoes of it reached the inn in the valley. Ianthe was enjoying it thoroughly. It is good, sometimes, to see nature on a wild, rude, and grand scale-helps us to shake

off the petty element that will cling to artificial conditions of life in large towns at the highest pitch of culture and civilisation.

"Take care," cried Tony, as a blinding flash of lightning fell at no very great distance.

"Let me be rash for once," she entreated wilfully; "the pleasure is worth the risk if there is any. Look how the sun still clings to the glacier."

It died away. The storm had now burst with violence; a wild gale came tearing down from the hills, making havoc among the pines that crashed in the wood, felling each other.

"I wonder now who understands nature," said Ianthe, involuntarily, as if thinking aloud, "among all her numerous professors."

"My friend Ichabod pretends

to."

"Your friend Ichabod is a Philistine of the Philistines," she replied promptly; "but the whole host of them could never win the day with me, here."

"It is grand-tremendous, in fact," said Tony, as the hail came pelting down, making them both. shiver; "but I believe that even this is not the scenery of all others that most appeals to me."

"Have you ever been in Italy?" she asked suddenly, turning to him. "I have " They smiled. The rest was understood.

"Still I like to come here," she persisted, "and I always should; I think it acts like a kind of moral tonic. It is like reading a page of ancient history, stories of the world when it was younger, simpler, and more straightforward than

now."

"And savage," put in Tony, laughing.

"Yes-savage-but fine too, and game for great things. Modern society has set up so many hundred breakwaters, to kill one force by

another. One falls back upon the Alps, as on the legends of Greek heroes and old paladins, just to recollect what strength is."

The Alps were becoming so boisterous now that even Ianthe consented to retreat into the interior of the châlet. She and Tony seated themselves on a wooden trough, the little urchins still looking on intently, as at a

show.

"Have you been away from England long?" she asked, presently.

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Only ten days. I saw you pass, do you know, last Tuesday, at Handeck."

"At Handeck? How was that? I saw nobody."

"I was under the trees somewhere; ruminating over the waterfall. I shall not forget it," he added slowly, "nor how you broke up a train of rather black speculations."

"Why, what melancholy could you possibly extract from that cascade?"

Tony replied with a little sketch of his mood, as flippant as he could make it. But Ianthe, as though she had seen the original even through the caricature, had suddenly become serious, and half saddened by her thought. "If I don't agree, it's not because I don't sympathise," she returned.

"How to make life bear

able is a terrible question enough to have to ask one's self, but then it must be answered. Some people live for their work, shut their eyes and their ears to all the rest; but that's not enough, as they find. And some lay themselves out for enjoyment; but that's not enough. And some, while they have chosen an object worth working for, have yet kept and prized their taste for such pleasures as lie by the way. These, only these, live, in my sense of the word."

"There's a piece of practical

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Do you know, I almost hate that companion of yours." "Oh yes, I know. I suppose you and he are natural enemies; you always strike me as such. But surely you take his extravagances too seriously."

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"And you too lightly," she said. Perhaps I am wrong; I cannot laugh at them. Whatever they

seem in themselves, they are not ludicrous in their effects, sometimes."

“Well, I like Ichabod, I confess," said Tony.

"More than that, he seems to have a kind of fascination for you."

"Perhaps he is so sharpsighted, uncompromising-not to be tossed about or worked upon like other men.'

"Then you like him not because his heart is in good tune, but because it is dumb.'

"I like him because he is a friend from whom you will always hear the truth, however unpleasant it happens to be."

"Nay," said Lanthe, "you mean you will only hear it from him when it happens to be unpleasant."

"Exactly, and therefore-" "Are you going to say it is always so?"

He was, but stopped short. For he simply could not look Ianthe in the face and say that all facts and existences might admit of improvement.

The storm had ceased. Colour and warmth were returning to the landscape; sky, stream, and mountain glittering with every con ceivable shade of green and blue. Ichabod, sick of the sight of water pouring forth from a wooden spout, the sole possible object of contemplation from the low windows of

the room, had walked to the front door. Presently he heard voices coming down the narrow path and saw two figures approaching. Tony and Ianthe, talking eagerly. His momentary surprise was followed up by a sudden sharp misgiving, painful and incensing as a stab from a penknife. Those two had made friends, particular friends it appeared. Well, and why not? What was there so exasperating in that?

"My mercurial pupil, after all, falling under the spell of a second daughter of Eve! Is that not enough ?"

Scarcely, to account for that sudden heart-burning. However he might lay it to this, as he said to himself that he could, he must prevent that catastrophe.

"What on earth is the matter with Ichabod?" said Tony carelessly, as they came in sight of him as he stood on the doorstep. "He looks as green green and yellow as jealousy incarnate. I say, old fellow, you've missed the most magnificent hurly-burly over there."

The pair came up with glowing cheeks, and hair still wet with the rain drops. Ichabod joined them, and walked on with them to the other hotel, where they found poor Mr. Lee chafing in enforced solitude, all the other travellers, disgusted by the wet weather, having left en masse that morning. Any human creature would have been welcome, how much more the two familiar English faces of Ichabod and Tony Sebright! Mr. Lee greeted them both cordially, tacitly agreeing to forget the little fracas at the Grievance Club, and asked them to dinner immediately. He and his daughter were leaving the next day.

During the table d'hôte, which consisted of their party alone, the conversation was general, but Tony, as Ichabod observed with relief, so far from devoting himself to Ianthe,

scarcely spoke to her, but took some pains to make himself agreeable to Mr. Lee. Nay, in this he succeeded beyond his hopes, not to say his wishes, for the old gentleman having entangled him in one of his favourite politico-socio-psychologioanthropological discourses during dessert, would not let him go, even after dinner, but carried him off to finish the subject over a cigar out of doors. Tony submitted with a respectful patience that was very edifying, but which from him was no more than a secret tribute to the father of Ianthe-it is to be feared.

Ichabod, on a sudden impulse, excused himself from joining them, assigning letters as a pretext. It was early still, about eight o'clock. Mr. Lee and Tony strolled down the village, which was already half asleep.

Ichabod returned to the long, cheerless, half-lighted diningsitting-reading room, where they had left Ianthe alone. He did not at once begin his letters, but shifted restlessly about the room, wondering why he could not settle. He supposed he was waiting for Ianthe to go-not that he wanted her to depart, either.

And she did not, but stood at the window, looking out, and taking no notice of him.

Well, he would take no notice of her, so he seated himself defiantly at the writing-desk and began to indite.

It was odd, in a man of his calibre, that his will should fail to overcome such a mere nervous distraction as that caused by her presence in the room. But so it was; no two consecutive words could he string together. Sense, grammar, handwriting-it was all a very chaos.

He glanced now and then at Ianthe, fancying she was watching him. No; her eyes and her thoughts were far away. Over and over

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Well, what is it then?"

"I cannot write, it appears, with somebody-with you, at least, in the room," he said with an awkward laugh. "No; don't go, that is not what I want," he added very spontaneously. Ianthe seated herself at the table and took up her needlework. This gave her at once an immense advantage over empty and nervous-fingered manhood. Ichabod paced up and down the length of the room, glancing at her from time to time.

She was in black to-night, with a little cloud of lace round her throat. Into her hair, which was curled up loosely round her head, she had fancifully twisted a little knot of Alpine flowers, gentians, pinks, and Parnassus grass, gathered during her walk, and already beginning to droop.

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I cannot think," she said presently, "why my presence, of all things, should affect you, of all people."

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Why me, of all people?" said

Now, had Ianthe been a coquette, here, it would seem, was a glorious, a divine opportunity for a tour de force in the art. Still, all her subtlety could hardly have hidden from Ichabod that it was coquetry; and, feeling that, he might have shaken off her spell and cured his own weakness the moment he could

despise it. It was her settled, serious, unaffected disapprobation and her unconcern about concealing it that piqued, nay, maddened him more than the most delicate play of feminine cunning could have done.

"I am sure I've heard you say," she replied," that you consider it quite beneath the dignity of a rational animal to give way to such trifling influences as those, and call people who are the sport of them simply contemptible."

"It is possible," said Ichabod, coming to a standstill opposite her where she sat at the long narrow table, bending over her work. She would not look up. He returned to the desk.

"What? Are you going to try the ink again?" said she laughing. "Indeed, it is hopeless; put there to punish tourists who stop indoors to write letters when they ought to be in the woods. Oh, but I forgot -Tony says you are a nature hater."

66

Tony!" repeated Ichabod, whom the word struck like a stone or a slap in the face.

"Tony Sebright," she said, smiling to herself, but not particularly confused by her inadvertence.

"No hater or lover, only a critic and a judge, but as such, of course, beyond your sympathy. I have no patience, I own, with the sentimental school who go shedding maudlin tears over the decline of the primitive virtues, and whose childish admiration of nature springs from blind ignorance, and can only live on through a convenient suspension of judgment on every question where the answer would be harsh and unpleasant."

"Yes," said Ianthe, taking him up with vivacity, "and because this view is a wrong view, and life and nature have their stern side, other people who have not strength or courage to face or bear the roughness revenge themselves by

heaping abuse on the whole. They cannot frankly accept harsh realities and struggle with them, and so condemn the scheme at once as clumsy and wicked. This is what I should call weak and maudlin."

"I ask merely, what right have you to set up nature as a model, and then omit all her characteristics but tenderness and prettiness ?"

"I leave out nothing. It is you who leave out the last two features of hers and their significance."

"I can dispense with them, in my Cosmos. After all they are but the luxuries, not necessaries of life; the dessert as it were."

"So you think." Ianthe had thrown down her work and turned to him, speaking with great animation. "But that love of beauty which is born in us, and has grown up in us, I believe it is something we cannot do without. Life may go on without it, perhaps but it is sad, and scanty, and incomplete-and its best pleasures remain might have beens.' I know it is the fashion to cry down the feeling, and set up others in its place and some have lost faith in it. But it is not dead for that-as some day we shall see, when its enemies have done their worst, and turned town into a factory, country to a market-garden, and humanity to an automaton to work them. Then men and women will discover that life, as they have made it, is not worth living, and will wonder how it could have seemed SO to those before them."

"Well," said Ichabod.

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the blight of Nihilism then the reaction may come-and the goddess you disown find men returning to her worship more eagerly than ever. Don't suppose I would make delight in beauty the object of life. But I call it a guiding star we lose sight of at our peril. Surely it is there to reconcile us to existence. Without it, what talisman should we have to carry us through moments when our spirits flag, and life and fate appear intolerable ?"

How well she looked while she spoke! One of Ianthe's characteristics was a rare harmony of her outward with her inner self. Voice, look, manner, words, were all equally expressive of her nature. She was a perfectly tuned instrument that gave the true response to every pressure. Few characters can afford to be so transparent.

Ichabod had come to a standstill by her side. He was most unconsciously turning over the contents of her work-basket. They might have been dominoes for aught he knew.

"Do you leave Zermatt soon ?" he asked.

For once in his life he felt no desire to contradict or even to argue.

"To-morrow morning; for Lucerne, en route home. And you?"

"I am bound for Geneva."

"Mr. Sebright goes with

you ?"

"Of course."

"Have you adopted him?" asked Ianthe, with a spark of malice.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because he is not of your age, nor, I should fancy, of your disposition, yet you seem inseparable, so far."

"So far! What do you

mean ?"

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