r's house, and attend a school of sculpture.
That was the beginning of a time when nothing counted except his work.

To Anna he wrote twice, but received no answer. From his tutor he had
one little note:

"MY DEAR LENNAN,

"So! You abandon us for Art? Ah! well--it was your moon, if I
remember--one of them. A worthy moon--a little dusty in these days--a
little in her decline--but to you no doubt a virgin goddess, whose hem,
etc.

"We shall retain the friendliest memories of you in spite of your
defection.

"Once your tutor and still your friend,

"HAROLD STORMER."

After that vacation it was long--very long before he saw Sylvia again.

PART II--SUMMER

I

Gleam of a thousand lights; clack and mutter of innumerable voices,
laughter, footsteps; hiss and rumble of passing trains taking gamblers
back to Nice or Mentone; fevered wailing from the violins of four
fiddlers with dark-white skins outside the cafe; and above, around,
beyond, the dark sky, and the dark mountains, and the dark sea, like
some great dark flower to whose heart is clinging a jewelled beetle. So
was Monte Carlo on that May night of 1887.

But Mark Lennan, at one of the little marble-topped tables, was in too
great maze and exaltation of spirit and of senses to be conscious of
its glare and babel, even of its beauty. He sat so very still that his
neighbours, with the instinctive aversion of the human creature to what
is too remote from its own mood, after one good stare, turned their eyes
away, as from something ludicrous, almost offensive.

He was lost, indeed, in memory of the minutes just gone by. For it had
come at last, after all these weeks of ferment, after all this strange
time of perturbation.

Very stealthily it had been creeping on him, ever since that chance
introduction nearly a year ago, soon after he settled down in
London, following those six years of Rome and Paris. First the merest
friendliness, because she was so nice about his work; then respectful
admiration, because she was so beautiful; then pity, because she was so
unhappy in her marriage. If she had been happy, he would have fled. The
knowledge that she had been unhappy long before he knew her had kept his
conscience still. And at last one afternoon she said: "Ah! if you come
out there too!" Marvelously subtle, the way that one little outslipped
saying had worked in him, as though it had a life of its own--like
a strange bird that had flown into the