r two to say.

"Owen, my lad," said he, "we must see you at my house to-morrow night."

The artist began to mutter some excuse.

"Oh, but it must be so," quoth Peter Hovenden, "for the sake of the
days when you were one of the household. What, my boy! don't you know
that my daughter Annie is engaged to Robert Danforth? We are making an
entertainment, in our humble way, to celebrate the event."

That little monosyllable was all he uttered; its tone seemed cold and
unconcerned to an ear like Peter Hovenden's; and yet there was in it
the stifled outcry of the poor artist's heart, which he compressed
within him like a man holding down an evil spirit. One slight outbreak,
however, imperceptible to the old watchmaker, he allowed himself.
Raising the instrument with which he was about to begin his work, he
let it fall upon the little system of machinery that had, anew, cost
him months of thought and toil. It was shattered by the stroke!

Owen Warland's story would have been no tolerable representation of the
troubled life of those who strive to create the beautiful, if, amid all
other thwarting influences, love had not interposed to steal the
cunning from his hand. Outwardly he had been no ardent or enterprising
lover; the career of his passion had confined its tumults and
vicissitudes so entirely within the artist's imagination that Annie
herself had scarcely more than a woman's intuitive perception of it;
but, in Owen's view, it covered the whole field of his life. Forgetful
of the time when she had shown herself incapable of any deep response,
he had persisted in connecting all his dreams of artistical success
with Annie's image; she was the visible shape in which the spiritual
power that he worshipped, and on whose altar he hoped to lay a not
unworthy offering, was made manifest to him. Of course he had deceived
himself; there were no such attributes in Annie Hovenden as his
imagination had endowed her with. She, in the aspect which she wore to
his inward vision, was as much a creature of his own as the mysterious
piece of mechanism would be were it ever realized. Had he become
convinced of his mistake through the medium of successful love,--had he
won Annie to his bosom, and there beheld her fade from angel into
ordinary woman,--the disappointment might have driven him back, with
concentrated energy, upon his sole remaining object. On the other hand,
had he found Annie what he fancied, his lot would have been so rich