need to use words with you in the strong hours,' as Wallen

stein calls them."

Claude started at this. he said, with sudden energy. vous notion that I always feel safer when I hear people talk." "And I like to talk," Dana answered, as if he had not observed the unwitting betrayal. 66 We should be the best of friends, for what one lacks the other supplies. We are alike, and yet not alike."

"You must always talk to me," "I like it. And I have a ner

"You are sanguine and joyous. Adversity would only bow you for a while. Your resolute and genial soul must reassert itself. And I fancy I am naturally inclined to melancholy." It's because of your life. Let me say it, Claude, with tenderest regard, there's a chain chafing you somewhere. I can wait patiently until you choose to show it. But I hope to see you taken out of this shade. I want you to live a full, free existence, and then, wherever you are, I shall ask to come and look at your soul. I can fancy what it will be in its blossoming, but that does not suffice. And if any power in my hands could hasten its completion"

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'O, no, no!" and the tone was freighted with unutterable anguish. Some souls are doomed to walk the darkest and bitterest paths alone, and mine is one. Yet do not fancy me wholly miserable. Though I must wear the chain, and refuse, with something that savors of ingratitude, to let another share my burden, you have all that can be given. The rest is with God, for he only can judge me rightly."

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Hush," Dana said, coming nearer.

"I think there are

some human hearts that can be pitiful and tender. And I want you to believe that there is no extremity, whether brought about by your own act, or that of another, but would find a lenient judge in me."

A statue could not have been stiller than Claude Tresorier, save that he breathed. There was no motion to win Dana, and his own subtile intuition told him this was dangerous ground.

For the shame of being too soon is not less hard to bear than agony of being too late.

the

you

"Tresorier," he began, in his usual tone, "I heard you say once that loved the water. There's a little fairy spot in the Harlem River, just above High Bridge, that I used to haunt when a boy. And now the spirit has taken me, as it did the Ancient Mariner, and I want to tell you my story. It must be there in the quiet and shimmering lights. I'll drive you up any evening, but let it be soon, while the moon rises early. Mrs. Tresorier shall not say that I tempted you to late hours." Claude cast about for some reasonable pretext to allege for not complying, but in his desperation the crisis passed.

"You will not refuse me this?"

It must have been a stronger heart than Claude's to resist the beseeching voice.

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Any evening you like." Since it must come, it were best to be over soon, and save the torture of a long anticipation. "Thank you. I was afraid you meant to put me off, but you wouldn't try if you knew how much I cared. Thursday night,

then, if you are disengaged.”

Claude assented, and Dana bade him a kind good night. He judged that the artist's soul was rich in sympathy, and that its profoundest depths would be stirred by the appeal he meant to. make. For himself, he could have borne on in silence. There was no inherent and fatal weakness in him, such as renders confidence necessary to some persons. and he must take some bold step to himself; to have it rest on him as the know.

But the time was brief, attach this fine soul to dearest friend one can

When Tresorier shut the hall door he shivered, although the night was so warm. Then he entered the room where the child and its mother lay asleep; but if there was any latent resolve in his mind, it was not put into execution then, or ever.

VIII.

A CONFIDENCE.

LEAVING the carriage at the hotel, on the high bank, Dana and his friend began to descend the narrow foot-path. The declivity to the river's edge at this point was quite steep, the bank showing in the soft light like miniature palisades. The river lay in a faint mist of silence. A silvery ribbon flowing between green shores, narrowing as it went on, through dark copses or ridges of rock, and dusky bits of woodland.

Claude's

Some strange instinct caused Dana to reach out his hand, as if to assist the other, as he knew the way better. slight figure, contrasted with his own, gave him a sense of protection. He felt the fingers tremble in his clasp. He pitied this fluttering soul with the purest, tenderest passion, such as one can only give to a person unconsciously weaker. He understood his power, but was too generous to use it freely, knowing what the end must be, even if Tresorier resisted a while with the armor of false strength.

"You are not afraid?" he said, his tone low and soft, as accorded well with the shadowy night and murmurous monotone of the river.

"There is our boat. I was up here this afternoon and selected it. At Yale I used to be considered a fine oarsman, though during late years I have rowed very little; but I think your life will be safe in my hands, as we have no rapids nor breakers."

A man emerged from the door-way of a cottage at the water's edge. Seeing Dana, he nodded sagaciously, and scram

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Isn't it veritable fairy

bled down to unfasten the chain knotted over a stake. But Dana was before him, and had thrown it off with a quick jerk after Claude was seated. His motions were light and agile as those of some graceful wild creature. He pushed the boat out with one oar, and then took his place, facing Tresorier. "Look about," he said, softly. land? The bridge shuts us out from the world - the great city lying below there. And this is such a miniature bay, deepened by the shadow of those great arches, and the hills on both sides, though they used to be higher. There isn't air enough to stir the trees, so it's a picture of still life."

A soft plash broke the resemblance, and the awe that was falling over Tresorier, bringing him back to the world.

"I don't ask if you like it, for I see by your face. And yet you are not quite at ease."

Claude held his hands over his eyes for a few moments. What old ghosts drowned out the present with a dim remembrance? For if he had ever sighed to live over that time, he did so no longer. He was willing to let it slip away and hold the present, -the present, with its greater pain and surer end. He found a secret joy in every pang.

They went slowly up the river. Presently the banks grew lower and more irregular; the purple shadows trembled softly in the arms of the silver light. Here and there a tree stood boldly out against the transparent heavens, where scarcely a cloud drifted. The sky was not blue, but of a serene pearly tint; pure floating ether, in the luminous hollow of which sailed golden stars. The young moon, like a bashful bride, glided frequently behind some hazy veil, as if half afraid of the wooing earth waiting to clasp her shadow, and prison it within some leafy nook. Beauty of that overpowering but refined type that unconsciously saddens the heart, because it calls up visions lost and forgotten save in hours like these.

Tresorier's eyes grew large and lustrous, and yet were

full of a touching melancholy. So deep, indeed, that Dana said, in an under breath,

you

"You are not unhappy because have come?” "Do not think that," Claude replied, hastily.

I want you

"I want you to be happy and at peace with me. to feel, that though I may sometimes stir the depths of your soul by an intense power that in certain conditions is as much a part of me as my own life, I shall never extort from you any sign of the regard for which I so ardently long."

Vain promise; and that Claude felt. For those eyes of azure, with the shade back of the irids as it were, quivered in their crystal lakes with a sense of strength, tempered and controlled by the fine brain, but discerning and mastering the tendencies of another towards this mental light. When the eyes said, "Thus far and no farther," they could chill the warmth and freedom of any soul; keep it in its own range as securely as with the strongest chain; but when they bade it come hither, the very sweetness, the smile of heavenly light, the rare and subtile enthusiasm, won it, even against its will, to dare any peril.

And now Claude was so won. Knowing that an hour or two would end the tension and the spell, he weighed the arguments on both sides, and yielded his soul as well as his senses. Yet he said, almost coldly, for so sound the first passion-pure utterances of the soul when moved to the mysterious depths of inward being,

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Why should you care so much? For you there certainly can be no lack of friends!"

"Not in the ordinary acceptation of the term, perhaps. But I am peculiar, and peculiar people suit me best."

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I was not aware that I was in scarcely any sense peculiar." "Because you know so little about yourself. I don't see where you have been living all these years; at all events it must have been with those who had a faculty of appropriating all the best qualities of your soul. And you don't seem the person to be so appropriated either, for your individuality is strongly