ble powers bestow upon us.
But that which comes from mortals--"

He suddenly sprang up, ran his hand through his hair, and stepped so
close to his sweetheart, that Julie, little as she feared him even in
his anger, involuntarily retreated a step.

"Felix was right," he said, in a hollow voice. "There is only one way
of escape. These chains or others--we can never be free except on the
other side of the ocean. Julie, if you could only make up your mind, if
you feel as terribly in earnest as I do for our happiness--"

"My friend," she interrupted him, "I know what you would say. But the
more earnestly I long for your--_our_ happiness--the more must I insist
upon our striving to attain it in a perfectly prosaic and sober way.
Your friend is a born adventurer, a circumnavigator--a world conqueror.
Your world and mine is this studio. Can we take it with us in the ship?
And do you think a finer sense of art is to be found among the Yankees
or the red-skins than among our countrymen? No, my dearest Jansen, I
think that with courage and good sense we shall be able to free
ourselves even on this side of the water. You men are masters in
despairing, we women in hoping. And, besides, the end of our year of
probation is still far enough off."

"Hope!" he cried, gnashing his teeth. "If a tigress had me in her
claws, you might, with far more show of reason, call out to me only to
give up hope with life! But this woman! Do you know a more terrible
enemy of human happiness than this lie--this cold, rouged, heartless,
unnatural lie? If she only hated me as immeasurably as she pretends to
love me, truly, I myself should think it too soon to despair. A mortal
can become satiated even with hate; and malice, too, is something of
which one can get tired. But what is to be hoped when it is all merely
a game, and the innermost nature of one's enemy is the nature of a
comedian? Every spark of conscience has been extinguished in this
wretched woman since her girlhood; her life is to her nothing
but a _role_; her love and hate have become merely a question of
costumes--applause and money are her highest and holiest conceptions.
And she fears for both, if she lets me go free. It is flattering to
her--one success more--to be able to pose before herself and the world
as an injured innocent, a robbed wife, a mother whose child has been
taken from her--and for that reason she refuses all my entreaties and
offers with indignation, for she knows wel