But even as she gazes, she sees that the eyes "are altering--altered!"
She knows not why, she never has understood this sudden, wondrous
happening of her marriage, but the eyes to which she trusts are
altering--altered--and what can she do? . . . With heartrending pathos,
what she does is to clutch at his words to her, the music which had
lifted her, and now perhaps will lift him too by its mere sound. "I love
you, love" . . . but what does love mean? She knows not, and her "music"
is but ignorant echo; if she did know, she could prevent this change,
but the change is not prevented, so it cannot have been just the
words--it must have been in the tone that his power lay to lift her, and
_that_ she cannot find, not understanding. So in the desperate need to
see and hear him as he was at first, she turns to her last device--

". . . Or stay! I will repeat
Their speech, if that contents you. Only change
No more"--

and thus to him, but half aware as yet, sure only that she is not the
dream-lady from afar, Phene speaks the words that Lutwyche wrote, and
now waits outside to hear.

"I am a painter who cannot paint;
In my life, a devil rather than saint;
In my brain, as poor a creature too;
No end to all I cannot do!
Yet do one thing at least I can--
Love a man or hate a man
Supremely: thus my lore began . . ."

The timid voice goes on, saying the lines by rote as Phene had learned
them--and hard indeed they must have been to learn! For, as Lutwyche had
told his friends, it must be "something slow, involved, and mystical,"
it must hold Jules long in doubt, and lure him on until at innermost--

"Where he seeks sweetness' soul, he may find--this!"

And truly it is so "involved," that, in the lessons at Natalia's, it had
been thought well to tutor Phene in the probable interruptions from her
audience of one. There was an allusion to "the peerless bride with her
black eyes," and _here_ Jules was almost certain to break in, saying
that assuredly the bride was Phene herself, and so, could she not tell
him what it all meant?

"And I am to go on without a word."

She goes on--on to the analysis, utterly incomprehensible to her, of
Lutwyche's plan for intertwining love and hate; and with every word the
malice deepens, becomes directer in its address. If any one should ask
this painter who can hate supremely, _how_ his hate can "grin through
Lov