g and scratching your head for in that way?"

"It's no use," replied Zack; "I've tried it a dozen times, and I find I
can't draw a Gladiator's nose."

"Can't!" cried Mr. Blyth, "what do you mean by applying the word 'can't'
to any process of art in _my_ presence? There, that's the line of the
Gladiator's nose. Go over it yourself with this fresh piece of chalk.
No; wait a minute. Come here first, and see how Madonna is striking in
the figure; the front view of it, remember, which is the most difficult.
She hasn't worked as fast as usual, though. Do you find your view of
the model a little too much for you, my love?" continued Valentine,
transferring the last words to his fingers, to communicate them to
Madonna.

She shook her head in answer. It was not the difficulty of drawing from
the cast before her, but the difficulty of drawing at all, which was
retarding her progress. Her thoughts would wander to the copy of the
Venus de Medici that was hidden under Mrs. Blyth's coverlid; would
vibrate between trembling eagerness to see it presented without longer
delay, and groundless apprehension that Zack might, after all, not
remember it, or not care to have it when it was given to him. And as her
thoughts wandered, so her eyes followed them. Now she stole an anxious,
inquiring look at Mrs. Blyth, to see if her hand was straying towards
the hidden drawing. Now she glanced shyly at Zack--only by moments at
a time, and only when he was hardest at work with his port-crayon--to
assure herself that he was always in the same good humor, and likely
to receive her little present kindly, and with some appearance of
being pleased to see what pains she had taken with it. In this way her
attention wandered incessantly from her employment; and thus it was
that she made so much less progress than usual, and caused Mr. Blyth to
suspect that the task he had set her was almost beyond her abilities.

"Splendid beginning, isn't it?" said Zack, looking over her drawing.
"I defy the whole Royal Academy to equal it," continued the young
gentleman, scrawling this uncompromising expression of opinion on the
blank space at the bottom of Madonna's drawing, and signing his name
with a magnificent flourish at the end.

His arm touched her shoulder while he wrote. She colored a little, and
glanced at him, playfully affecting to look very proud of his sentence
of approval--then hurriedly resumed her drawing as their eyes met. He
was sent back to his p