at heart."

He rapidly formulated his plan of action, and even the sentences with
which he was to meet and conquer this modern Circe.

"I will keep Eva's face before me," he thought, "and I will treat her
coldly. She is high-spirited and keen; she will notice the change at
once and resent it. She is too proud to demand an explanation."

He felt himself equal to the ordeal. He was anxious now for her to come
that it might be safely passed. As the hours went by he grew impatient;
he placed her portrait on the easel and fancied the original was before
him. He went through an imaginary dialogue with it in which he was
wholly victorious. He no longer felt any emotion for this woman.

"I will begin a new life," he said, as he strode rapidly up and down the
room; "a new life." But there was a feverishness in his voice that did
not bode well for his resolution.

"I wish she would come," he muttered, fretfully.

His cheeks were hot and flushed, and his hands were like ice, and
trembling. And the result was--that he failed--failed miserably and
completely. When, an hour later, Evelin March entered the studio and,
throwing off her wrap, stood before him, imperious, soulless and
beautiful--a delicate odor, as of pansies, from her white flesh,
stealing into his brain--his pledges of faith and his fair resolves
melted away like walls of mist, and the face of Eva Delorme shrank back
into the silent recesses of his heart, and only a small voice within him
whispered, "Coward--traitor--"

She glanced at him sharply.

"Something troubles you, _mon ami_. You are not overjoyed at my coming.
I have been fancying to myself how impatiently you were waiting."

His hands were no longer trembling. He was calm enough, now, but it was
the calmness of defeat--of having yielded to the inevitable.

"I have indeed been waiting impatiently," he said, smiling. "You see
that I have been even consoling myself with your picture," and he
pointed to the easel.

"From an artistic point of view, only, I fancy."

"That is unkind. I have been holding a conversation with it that I fear
I should hesitate to repeat--with the original."

"How interesting! A rehearsal, perhaps."

"Perhaps; and I was testing the powers of my work as compared to those
of the original."

"And with the result"--

"That my work is a failure."

"How humiliating! May I ask in what way?"

"I could withstand the charms of the picture, but with the original"--

"Well, a