ever patient with life, but
always positive in the painstaking of perfection as to its art.

The artist himself lay in a deep chair before the fire, smoking and
dreaming in his old familiar way; his wife sat on the floor beside him,
her head leaning against the arm of his chair, her clasped hands hanging
about his knee, and in her eyes and on her lips there rested a charm of
utter joy as sweet as it was beautiful.

They were so silent in the content of their mutual reverie that the call
of the cuckoo clock startled them both slightly. Von Ibn took his cigar
from between his lips and discovered that it had gone out some time
since. Rosina smiled at his face and extended her hand towards the
coffee table, on the side of which lay two or three wax matches.

"No, no," her husband cried quickly, "it is no need. I have quite
finish," and he threw what remained of the cigar to the flames as he
spoke. "What have you think of?" he asked, as she laid her head back on
the chair-arm; "was it of a pleasant thing?"

"I was thinking," she said slowly, "of that man in Zurich, and wondering
when and where he would learn of our marriage."

"Who of Zurich?"

"Surely you haven't forgotten that man in Zurich that I went to the
Tonhalle with."

"Oh, yes," he exclaimed quickly; "the one I did go to the Gare with."

"Yes, the one who wrote Uncle John about you."

"Did he write about me? What has that Zuricher man to say of me?"

She rose to her feet and stood beside the fire, staring down into its
leaping blades of light and flame.

"You know what he said as well as I do,--just everything that he could
to make trouble for you and me."

Then her wrath began to rise, as it always did when her mind recurred to
this particular subject.

"What do you suppose made him bother to do such a mean thing? Why did he
want to make all that trouble for? Why couldn't he stick to his own
business and let us alone? It is maddening to think of. I shall never
forgive him--never!"

Von Ibn raised the heavy darkness of his eyes up to her profile, and a
dancing light passed over the unutterable tenderness that shadowed their
glow.

"What trouble has he make?" he asked gently; "why may you never forgive
him? Come to me, here upon my knee, and tell me of that."

He held out his hand, smiling, and she smiled too, and came to take her
place upon the seat which he had indicated to her.

"He made all the trouble that he possibly could," she said, touc