"'Italia, oh, Italia, thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty: which became A funeral dower of present woes and past,'"

repeated the voice of a young man leaning from an upper window, and looking down upon the antique streets of famous Rome.

"I think you have more taste for poetry than painting, Carl," said a second voice.

The scene is an artist's studio, up four flights of stairs, and very near the sky. A large skylight gives admission to the clear and radiant light, and the windows are open for the soft breeze to enter the room, though it is the month of December in that fair Italian clime, where it is always summer. Pictures and palettes, statuettes and bronzes adorn the walls, and somewhat litter the room, and its only two occupants wear artists' blouses, though one of the wearers sits idly at the window gazing down into the street. He is blonde and stout, with gay blue eyes, and is unmistakably German, while his darker companion, who is busily painting away at a picture, is just as certainly an American. They both bear their nationalities plainly in their faces.

"Poetry and painting are sister arts, I think," said Carl Muller, laughing. "The poets paint with words as we do with colors. They have the advantage of us poor devils, for their word-paintings remain beautiful forever, while our ochres crack and our crimsons fade."

"You should turn poet, then, Carl."

"I had some thought of it once," said the mercurial Carl, laughing, "but upon making trial of my powers, I found that I lacked the divine afflatus."

"Say rather that you lacked the more prosaic attribute that you lack in painting—industry," said the American.

"Whatever failing I may have in this respect is fully atoned for by you, Leslie. Never saw I a poor dauber so deeply wedded to his art. Your perseverance is simply marvelous."

"It is the only way to conquer fame, Carl. There is no royal road to success," said the artist, painting busily away as he talked.

Carl yawned lazily and repeated Beattie's well-known lines:
"'Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar; Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime,[Pg 38] Has felt the influence of malignant star, And waged with fortune an eternal war!'"

"The 'malignant star' in your case means idleness, Carl. You have talent enough if you would but apply yourself. Up, up, man, and get to your work."

"It is impossible to conquer my constitutional inertia this evening, Leslie. To-morrow I will vie with you in perseverance and labor like a galley-slave," laughed the German, stretching his lazy length out of the window.

There was silence a few moments. Carl was absorbed in something going on in the street below—perhaps a street fight between two fiery Italians, or perhaps the more interesting sight of some pretty woman going to mass or confession—while Leslie Dane's brush moved on unweariedly over his task. Evidently it was a labor of love.

"I should like to know where you get your models, Leslie," said Carl Muller, looking back into the room. "You do not have the Italian type of women in your faces. What do you copy from?"

"Memory," said the artist, laconically.

"Do you mean to say that you know a woman anywhere half as beautiful as the women you put on your canvas?"

"I know one so transcendently lovely that the half of her beauty can never be transferred to canvas," said Leslie Dane, while a flush of pride rose over his features.

"In America?" asked Carl.

"In America," answered Leslie.

"Whew!" said the German, comprehensively. "I thought you did not care for women, Mr. Dane."

"I never said so, Carl," said Leslie Dane, smiling.

"I know—but actions speak louder than words. You avoid them, you decline invitations where you are likely to meet them, and the handsome models vote you a perfect bear."

"Because there is but one woman in the whole world to me," answered Leslie Dane, and he paused a moment in his painting, and looked away with a world of tenderness in his large, dark eyes.

Carl Muller began to look interested.

"Ah! now I see why you work so hard," he said. "There is a woman at the bottom of it. There is always a woman at the bottom of everything that goes on in this world whether it be good or evil."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Leslie, resuming his work with a sigh to the memory of the absent girl he loved.
"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, Fo............