ourite colour, a dark-blue. Her rising to meet him was that of a
queen who bath an honoured guest. The jewels beneath her long dark
lashes were as radiant as when first she heard him say, 'I love you.'
All the impulses of her impetuous character had centred on this one end
of her life. Her eccentricities had tamed themselves in the long
discipline of frustrated desire. The breath of her body was love. About
her stole a barely perceptible perfume, which invaded the senses, which
wrapped the heart in luxury.

Wilfrid dropped on one knee before her and kissed her hand.

'You are in a happy mood,' Beatrice said. 'Who has been telling you the
last flattery?'

'I have seen no one to-day. If I look happy--should I not?'

She drew her finger along the line of his eyebrow.

'How does your picture get on?'

'I have to give two sittings next week. Thank goodness they are the
last.'

'Oh! why wasn't it in time for the Academy! But it must go next year.'

Wilfrid laughed as he seated himself opposite to her.

'I am not sure, after all, that you are happy,' she said, leaning her
head a little aside as she gazed at him. 'Now you are thoughtful. I
suppose you will be more and more thoughtful.'

'Deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat, and public care--'

quoted Wilfrid, with a little wrying of the lips. 'This, you know, is
one of the penalties of greatness.'

She seemed about to rise, but it was only to slip forward and sink upon
her knees by his side, her arms embracing him. It was like the fall of
fair waters, so gracefully impulsive, so self-abandoning.

'Not one kiss to-day?' she murmured, her voice like the dying of a
flute.

And she raised to him a face lit from the inmost sanctuary of love.

'You are as beautiful,' he said, 'as any woman of whom fable ever told.
Your beauty frightens me. It is sometimes more than human--as though the
loveliest Greek goddess suddenly found breath and colour and the light
of eyes.'

Beatrice threw her head far back, laughing silently; he saw the laughter
dance upon her throat.

'My love! my own!' she whispered. 'Say you love me!'

'Dearest, I love you!'

'Ah! the words make my heart flutter so! I am glad, glad that I have
beauty; but for that you would never have loved me. Let me hide my face
as I tell you. I used to ask myself whether I was not really fairer than
other women--I thought--I hoped! But you were so indifferent. Wilfrid,
how long, how long I have loved yo