d gayety, she put out her hand, and said
with a smile, "If I take the wrong road, it will not be because of your
flattery."

"God forbid that you should take any road but one where you will find
and give happiness!" said Klesmer, fervently. Then, in foreign fashion,
he touched her fingers lightly with his lips, and in another minute she
heard the sound of his departing wheels getting more distant on the
gravel.

Gwendolen had never in her life felt so miserable. No sob came, no
passion of tears, to relieve her. Her eyes were burning; and the
noonday only brought into more dreary clearness the absence of interest
from her life. All memories, all objects, the pieces of music
displayed, the open piano--the very reflection of herself in the
glass--seemed no better than the packed-up shows of a departing fair.
For the first time since her consciousness began, she was having a
vision of herself on the common level, and had lost the innate sense
that there were reasons why she should not be slighted, elbowed,
jostled--treated like a passenger with a third-class ticket, in spite
of private objections on her own part. She did not move about; the
prospects begotten by disappointment were too oppressively
preoccupying; she threw herself into the shadiest corner of a settee,
and pressed her fingers over her burning eyelids. Every word that
Klesmer had said seemed to have been branded into her memory, as most
words are which bring with them a new set of impressions and make an
epoch for us. Only a few hours before, the dawning smile of
self-contentment rested on her lips as she vaguely imagined a future
suited to her wishes: it seemed but the affair of a year or so for her
to become the most approved Juliet of the time: or, if Klesmer
encouraged her idea of being a singer, to proceed by more gradual steps
to her place in the opera, while she won money and applause by
occasional performances. Why not? At home, at school, among
acquaintances, she had been used to have her conscious superiority
admitted; and she had moved in a society where everything, from low
arithmetic to high art, is of the amateur kind, politely supposed to
fall short of perfection only because gentlemen and ladies are not
obliged to do more than they like--otherwise they would probably give
forth abler writings, and show themselves more commanding artists than
any the world is at present obliged to put up with. The self-confident
visions that had beguiled her