"You went off from the ball in a hurry last night, Leslie. Why did you not stop for me?"

It was Carl Muller who spoke. He had come into Mr. Dane's rooms the morning after the ball and found him sitting over a cup of coffee, looking haggard and weary in the clear light of day.

"Excuse me, Carl," he responded. "The actual truth is, I forgot you. I was tired and wanted to come away, and I did so, sans ceremonie."

"Well, you look fagged and tired out, that's a fact. I never saw you look so ill. Have a smoke; it will clear the mist from your brain."

"Thank you, no," said the artist, briefly.

Carl sat down on a chair and hummed a few bars of a song while he regarded his friend in some surprise at his altered looks.

"I was sorry you went off without me, last night," he said presently. "I wanted to chaff you a little. Weren't you surprised and abashed when you found that the old woman whose portrait you declined to paint was the loveliest angel in the world?"

"It was quite a surprise," Mr. Dane said, sipping his cafe au lait composedly.

"Did you ever see such a beautiful young creature?" continued Carl, with enthusiasm.

"Yes," was the unexpected reply.

"You have!" exclaimed Carl; "I did not think it possible for two such divinities to exist upon this earth. Have the goodness to tell me where you ever saw Mrs. Carlyle's equal in grace and loveliness."

But Mr. Dane, who but seldom descended to Carl's special prerogative, poetry, sat down his cup and slowly repeated like one communing with himself:
"'I remember one that perished; sweetly did she speak and move; Such an one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.'"

"She is dead, then?" said Carl.

"She is dead to me," was the bitter reply.

And with a significant look Carl repeated the lines that came next to those that Leslie had quoted:

[Pg 101]
"'Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore? No, she never loved me truly; love is love forevermore.'"

"Forevermore," Leslie Dane repeated with something like a sigh.

He rose and began to pace the floor with bowed head and arms folded over his breast.

"Carl," he said suddenly, "I have had enough of Paris. Have you?"

"What, in seven days? Why, my dear fellow, I have just begun to enjoy myself. I have only had a taste of pleasure yet."

"I am going back to Rome to-day," continued Leslie.

"I should like to know why you have made this sudden decision, Leslie—for it is sudden, is it not?" asked Carl, pointedly.

Leslie Dane flushed scarlet, then paled again.

"Yes, it is sudden," he answered, constrainedly, "but none the less decisive. Don't try to argue me out of it, Carl, for that would be useless. Believe me, it is much better that I should go. I want to get to work again."

"There is something more than work at the bottom of this sudden move," said Carl Muller, quietly. "I don't wish to intrude on your secrets, mon ami, but I could tell you just why you are going back to Rome in such a confounded hurry."

"You could?" asked Leslie Dane, incredulously.

"You know I told you long ago, Leslie, that there is a woman at the bottom of everything that happens. There is one at the bottom of this decision of yours. You are running away from a woman!"

"The deuce!" exclaimed Leslie, startled out of his self-control by Carl Muller's point-blank shot; "how know you that?"

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