d with an unutterable
sense of uneasiness. Something was wrong, I felt assured. I daily kissed
the sweet lips"----

"Of a twenty-five-cent daguerreotype."

Greenleaf did not notice the interruption. "I thought the eyes looked
troubled; they even seemed to reproach me; yet the soul that beamed in
them was as tender as ever."

"_Diablerie!_ I believe you are a spiritualist."

"At last I could bear it no longer. I shut up my room and took the cars
for Innisfield."

"I remember; that was when you gave out that you had gone to see your
aunt."

"I found Alice seriously ill. I won't detain you further than to say
that I did not leave her until she was completely restored, until my
long cherished feelings had found utterance, and we were bound by ties
that nothing but death will divide."

"Really, you are growing sentimental. The waters verily are moved."

"That is because an angel has troubled them. You will mock, I know; but
it is nevertheless true, as I am told, that, for the week before I left
Boston, she was in a half-delirious state, and constantly called my
name."

"And you heard her and came. Sharp senses, and a good, dutiful boy!"

"My presentiment was strange, wasn't it?"

"Oh, don't try to coax me into believing all that! It's very pretty, and
would make a nice little romance for a magazine; but you and I have
passed the age of measles and chicken-pox. Now, to follow your example,
let me make a summary. You are in love, you say, which, for the sake of
argument, I will grant. You are engaged. But you are ambitious. You want
to go to Italy, and you hope to surpass Claude, as Turner has done--over
the left. Then you will return and marry the constant Alice, and live in
economical splendor, on a capital--let me see--of eighty-seven dollars
and odd cents, being the proceeds of a certain auction-sale. Promising,
isn't it?"

Greenleaf was silent,--his pipe out.

"Don't be gloomy," continued Easelmann, in a more sympathetic tone. "Let
us take a stroll round the Common. I never walk through the Mall at
sunset without getting a new hint of effect."

"I agree to the walk," said Greenleaf.

"Let us take Charbon along with us."

"He doesn't talk."

"That's what I like him for; he thinks the more."

"How is one to know it?"

"Just look at him! talk your best,--parade your poetry, your criticism,
your epigrams, your puns, if you have any, and then look at him! By
Jove! I don't want a better talker. I know