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 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-psychologieanthropological 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

again he began, and in vain. Suddenly he sprang up with, for him, a violent and unusual exclamation and gesture of impatience.

"What is the matter?" she asked in surprise.

"I cannot write," said Ichabod, ruffled.

"No wonder; that ink is fit for nothing but to blot out with. I discovered that this morning," she returned good humouredly. "Don't attempt it."

"It is not the ink," muttered Ichabod.

"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 gathered during her walk, and already beginning to droop.

grass,

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

he.

"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 c ill 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.'

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

"Tony Sebright," she 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.

"Well, then, perhaps, they will understand how the charm has been lost, and the power of the beauty of the the world, and its infinite variety has suffered under

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 ?"

"That I don't think you will keep him long," returned the girl, audaciously.

"Why who do you think will tempt him away?" said he, pointedly, forcing a laugh. laugh. íanthe blushed, but replied quietly:

"Merely his own bent. It is very strong, you know."

Strong-like a wave that may be turned into one channel or another."

"There is a tide that sets, and conquers at last."

Ichabod was consumed with curiosity. She spoke with a sort of authority. Yet there was that in her manner which reassured him. It was like a settled indifference. If only it were not confidence.

"Tony's a nice fellow," he said, watching her with avidity, "though whether he's worth all the trouble I've taken about him at different times I begin to doubt."

"Will you resign him?" said Ianthe, suddenly, looking up.

"To you? Never!" He had forgotten himself, and the words came out with a violence that startled them both. "I mean," he resumed, "to whom do you wish me to leave him?"

"Only to himself."

"You seem excessively interested in his welfare."

"How can I help it?" said she frankly. "I am sure he has very rare ability, and I hate to see him wasting it, or letting it lie fallow

-the natural consequence of having the nothingness of all things mortal perpetually impressed on him.”

"So that is all ?"

Like a man under mesmerism he must yield to, even while resenting, this power stronger than his own will. Ianthe began to feel the tête-à-tête becoming painful, unbearable, and wishing to end it at all hazards, she rose, a little abruptly, gathered up her work, and wishing him good night, held out her hand.

He took it, and did not let go directly. She looked up quickly, and saw it was presence-not absence of mind on his part. Also, and for the first and only time, she seemed to see a glimpse of some frank emotion in that face; the man, as it were, painfully struggling with the mask, the iron of which had entered into his soul. It touched her with pity. He saw that, and with it came the fear that more it could never do now, a feeling that brought with it a sudden heart-sinking which overwhelmed him for a minute.

The wings of fortune do not pass every day, and after all, the best that can befall a man generally has passed him once, as a chance, which he has too often put from him, awares or

unawares.

"Good-night," she repeated in a softened tone.

"Goodbye," said he; then, upon some odd senseless impulse, he suddenly raised his left hand to the fading gentians in her hair, loosened, and took them out.

The voices of Mr. Lee and Tony in the passage outside here came to relieve Ianthe's embarrassment, and restore Ichabod's mind to its equilibrium. As the two others entered the room, the knot of halfwithered flowers dropped from his hand. The next minute Tony, seeing them lie on the floor, picked them up. But turning round to restore them to Ianthe he found she was gone.