ile to my lips, and the quietest tone to
my voice, as I turned to her and said,--

"Of course, dearest, I will consider it sufficient if you say so."

Perhaps she expected farther opposition, and my yielding surprised her.
She looked at me full for a minute in silence, then, failing to
discover a trace of the savage irritation I was feeling, she laid her
hand impulsively on mine, and said with a smile,--

"You are a dear, good-tempered fellow, Victor!" at which I laughed--
considerably.

The Academy is a place of all others, I should think, most calculated
to fatigue and oppress a person in nervous ill-health. It was just
twelve when Lucia and I arrived. The sun was at its hottest, and the
crowds within the rooms at their thickest. The air seemed lifeless and
laden with dust, swept up by the women's dresses, and filled with a
mixture of scents from White Rose to Eau de Cologne. The daylight was
harshly bright, and the unbroken lines of pictures in their glaring
gilt frames, annoyed and jarred upon the eye.

We moved very slowly with the rank of people passing down our side of
the gallery. Lucia never removed her eyes from the walls, except to
glance at me and make me refer to a name in the catalogue, and the
women who passed her were able to scrutinise her dress and face without
a return glance. This they did to the utmost limits of good breeding,
for both were sufficiently worthy of notice.

Whether Lucia looked pretty or plain, at her best or her worst, she
always looked more or less striking. Some women are like this; they can
appear everything but quiet and common-place. Lucia would be noticed
everywhere, sometimes favourably, sometimes the reverse; but noticed
she must infallibly be. An exceptionally beautiful figure, a certain
extravagance in dress, and an unusually fair skin made her conspicuous
where far more regular faces and straight profiles passed unnoticed.
She herself was absolutely indifferent to everything save the
paintings. Twice I called her attention to men who saluted her without
being seen by her as she passed close to them.

"I am very sorry," she said in answer. "It is a stupid fashion to
notice one's friends here. One should not be supposed to recognise them
at the Academy any more than in church!"

We drifted on slowly with the mass, and at last came to a standstill
before a wedge of figures in front of a prominent canvas. A nude female
figure stood upright, facing the spectator, with