ous moral justice to handsome examples of it in others. On
the whole, he had an incorruptible modesty. With his blooming complexion
and his serene gray eye, he felt the friction of existence more than was
suspected; but he asked no allowance on grounds of temper, he assumed
that fate had treated him inordinately well and that he had no excuse
for taking an ill-natured view of life, and he undertook constantly to
believe that all women were fair, all men were brave, and the world was
a delightful place of sojourn, until the contrary had been distinctly
proved.

Cecilia's blooming garden and shady porch had seemed so friendly to
repose and a cigar, that she reproached him the next morning with
indifference to her little parlor, not less, in its way, a monument to
her ingenious taste. "And by the way," she added as he followed her in,
"if I refused last night to show you a pretty girl, I can at least show
you a pretty boy."

She threw open a window and pointed to a statuette which occupied the
place of honor among the ornaments of the room. Rowland looked at it a
moment and then turned to her with an exclamation of surprise. She
gave him a rapid glance, perceived that her statuette was of altogether
exceptional merit, and then smiled, knowingly, as if this had long been
an agreeable certainty.

"Who did it? where did you get it?" Rowland demanded.

"Oh," said Cecilia, adjusting the light, "it 's a little thing of Mr.
Hudson's."

"And who the deuce is Mr. Hudson?" asked Rowland. But he was absorbed;
he lost her immediate reply. The statuette, in bronze, something less
than two feet high, represented a naked youth drinking from a gourd. The
attitude was perfectly simple. The lad was squarely planted on his feet,
with his legs a little apart; his back was slightly hollowed, his head
thrown back, and both hands raised to support the rustic cup. There was
a loosened fillet of wild flowers about his head, and his eyes, under
their drooped lids, looked straight into the cup. On the base was
scratched the Greek word ;aa;gD;gi;gc;ga, Thirst. The figure might have
been some beautiful youth of ancient fable,--Hylas or Narcissus, Paris
or Endymion. Its beauty was the beauty of natural movement; nothing had
been sought to be represented but the perfection of an attitude. This
had been most attentively studied, and it was exquisitely rendered.
Rowland demanded more light, dropped his head on this side and that,
uttered vague excla