rise and fall of this melody of thoughts, and to
transcribe it as well as she was able. The secrecy with which she
pursued this art lent it an additional charm; and many a lonely evening
hour was thus whiled away, as quickly and happily as if it had been
spent in the company of an intimate friend, to whom she could have
poured out her innermost heart.

But now, when she had reached her home, and had hurriedly closed the
blinds that she might brood in absolute silence and solitude over what
had happened, she felt a sudden shock pass through her heart as she
reflected that during the past week her thoughts had more than once
been busy with the audacious man who had dared this theft of her
beauty--ay, that he had even entered more than once into her secret
poems. She had not given much more thought to this than to the other
subjects she had touched on in her diary: merely that she had made one
more acquaintance, and that of a man who could scarcely be said to have
an everyday face, and to whom all the others in his circle conceded the
first rank without a moment's jealousy. But was it not a singular
coincidence that, at the very time when she was attempting to describe
the impression that he had made upon her, he should be engaged in
moulding the image of her own features?

She rose thoughtfully to go to her writing-desk. She was obliged to
pass by the glass, and she stood before it for a while earnestly
contemplating her reflection, with the same sort of curiosity she would
have shown had she never seen herself before, but had just had her
attention drawn to herself by some third person. But, at the moment,
she was not at all pleased with her appearance. The face of the Eve
seemed to her fancy a thousand times more beautiful; he himself would
be forced to admit this if he should see her and compare her, face to
face, with his work. "Ten years ago," she said to herself, with a shake
of the head, "I may, perhaps, have looked like that. Oh, for the
beautiful lost years!"

For all this she began to arrange her hair in the same way that he had
arranged it in the statue, and she found this style of coiffure, in a
plain knot, charmingly becoming to her. She blushed at this, and turned
away. And now her heart beat still louder, as she drew forth from the
desk the book containing her confessions, and read over the last pages.
"I really believe I was in a fair way of falling in love with him," she
said aloud, when she had reach