. She was always ready to sacrifice herself in order to
help artists out of every sort of difficulty.

"I have no desire to be a Bonifacius Ritter," said Frederick. "A great
collection of studios, with works turned out by wholesale, no matter how
excellent they may be, does not suit my disposition. What I want is a
workshop opening on a garden, where I can pick violets in winter and
break off branches of evergreen oak, yew, and laurel. There, in peace and
quiet, hidden from the world, I should like to devote myself to art and
culture in general. The myrtle, too, would have to blossom again within
my garden wall, Miss Burns." Miss Burns laughed and paid no attention to
the allusion.

She thoroughly approved of his plans from her own healthy point of view.

"There are enough people," she said, "who are born physicians and men of
action, and there are far too many entering those careers and jostling
one another out of the way."

She spoke of Ritter with sympathy, yet in a tone of superiority, and
smiled with benignant understanding upon his naive penetration into the
regions of the Upper Four Hundred.

"Life," she said, "when it is eager to hurry on with a show of vivacity,
demands credulity, love of pleasure, ambition. I, myself, before my
father lost the greater part of his fortune, got to know high life in
England through and through. I found it insipid and boresome."

When Frederick was able to stand alone and walk and go up and down
stairs, Miss Burns left for New York to complete the work that she had
begun in Ritter's studio, wishing to finish it before the middle of
May, when she intended to return to England to straighten out some legal
matters in connection with a small inheritance from her mother, who had
died two years before. She had already engaged passage on the _Auguste
Victoria_ of the Hamburg-American line. Frederick von Kammacher let her
go without protest. He did not try to detain her. He profoundly admired
the girl who was so strong and stately; and he had conceived of his
future existence as a state of lasting companionship with her. There was
Dutch and German blood combined with the culture and polish of the
Englishwoman. Wherever she settled down, wherever she busied herself, she
produced the cosey charm of the English home. She was healthy and, as
Frederick had to admit, very beautiful. He did not detect the faintest
symptom of the thing he most dreaded, feminine hysteria.

"I should like to