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S―, whom I have always considered so fine a specimen of Greek beauty. Prince Zariades was even more perfect. The type was underdrawn rather than exaggerated, and was the more effective upon that account. And what strength, what character, what manliness in his expression! No description can do justice to the personality of the man. had character, moral force-qualities that I admire so much more than a merely brilliant intellect, an evanescent flame, amounting to little or nothing, if unsustained by the moral force of which it should be the instrument. Not that Prince Zariades was deficient in intellect. He may have been a second Socrates for aught that I know. I wish simply to express that a strong personality, character, manliness, struck me as his distinguishing traits. And his unusual beauty! He had one of those foreheads that indicate strength. What is it that gives certain brows such an expression of power in reserve? The sockets of his eyes were carved like those of a Greek statue. The lids had that divine droop that is only seen in the highest types of beauty. The eyes themselves were of a dim blue, the blue of a sleeping thunder-cloud. His throat was like a column; his mouth, nose, and chin were those of the Apollo; and as for his hair-can you imagine, Adèle, the color of his hair?"

"Undoubtedly that which the gods designed — whatever that may have been."

"A bright, chestnut brown, the rarest of all colors, the most beautiful; and he wore it in short crisp curls. Just such covered the heads of the gods when they sat around their banqueting-tables in Olympus, and Hebe poured out their wine. Ah! those chestnut curls! They in themselves alone would have been enough to bewilder an ordinary brain; but what bewildered me was the strange impression that I was gazing upon the actual being whom I had been endeavoring to imagine. There was the face that had so painfully haunted me from the moment that I first conceived the idea of my picture. In the spirit world

I must have known Prince Zariades, but little did I imagine that my dream, as well as that of the heroine of the legend, would prove a reality. Ah! my prince! my prince! What do you think of him, Adèle ?" “Without a dénouement, your story was not worth relating. How did it terminate? ""

"In nothing! It is that which troubles me! I looked at Prince Zariades in despair. Monsieur, I thought, I would give a fortune, if I had it, for the privilege of sketching that handsome face of yours; how shall I make you acquainted with the fact? I thought of a thousand excuses for speaking to him, and asking his address; but there was some fatal objection to every scheme that occurred to me. I took out my card, and resolved to state my request plainly, in writing, and ask him to call at my studio; but my pencil refused to frame a single sentence. Finally, my observation began to attract his attention, or I imagined so, and became embarrassed. Before I had recovered my self-possession, he stopped the stage, and got out. I let him slip from me, and he disappeared in the crowd."

"I think you were very foolish, that is, if you really wished him to sit to you."

"It was not the fear of disregarding conventional rules that prevented me from speaking, but the mere habit of yielding to them. Conventionality is a woman's inheritance, and she does not know how closely she is bound until a sudden emergency calls upon her to act with the freedom and spontaneity of an independent being; and then her wits are sure to play her false. We have courage enough, heaven knows, to conquer kingdoms, but we cannot break a single link of the subtle, insidious, invisible chains, wound about us in our infancy, that have grown with our growth, and strengthened with our strength, until they seem to have become a portion of our very life. What miserable slaves we are! To gain the greatest name that life can offer, we cannot pass beyond the imaginary circle

I

in which our petty lives revolve!
saw the truth of what you suggest as
soon as it was too late. Five minutes
after he had gone I could have cried
with vexation at my stupidity in letting
him depart. I could cry now, if I chose,
but will not, for tears will not aid me in
finding him, and that is the object to
the attainment of which I now intend
to devote myself."

him will exert upon my life, you would not ask me whether I am in earnest. The difficulty of obtaining proper models is one of the greatest that I have had to contend with since I began to be an artist. Ah! to be compelled to evoke pale shadowy images from your own weary brain, when you are longing to copy from nature with a firm and glowing hand-how hard it is! If I

"How do you propose to accomplish could have pursued a proper course of study in art, I should have a hundred

it ? " "You must assist me. What shall I times the power that I have; and it is do?"

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'There," she said, handing the card to Mrs. Vane, with an air of triumph, "I flatter myself that this will prove successful. There can be but one such Apollo in the city, of course. He will be conscious of his own perfections, and will hasten to answer for himself."

"Nonsense, Adèle!" said Mrs. Vane, laughing, in spite of herself, as she glanced over the card. "It is you who are talking nonsense now. I ask your advice, and you reply by turning me into ridicule."

"Are you really in earnest, Fanny?" "Ah! if you knew the importance to me of meeting this stranger again-if you knew the influence that seeing

to gain this, and with it the privilege of working to the best advantage, and for this reason alone, that I am so anxious to hasten my departure for Italy. I must give expression to the truth. I will do so, or will cease being an artist altogether; and the time has come when I must decide on the path that I am to pursue. The picture that I am now contemplating I will either make all that I desire,—and I can do so, if I am able to command the necessary means, or, if this is impossible, I will not paint it at all. I will abandon the idea forever."

"And you wish me to advise you?" "I asked you to do so."

"If the success of your picture is to depend upon finding the stranger whom you have just described to me, give up all idea of painting it, at once and forever. Or at least throw it aside until you are able to consider the question more calmly. A thousand subjects more beautiful, more grand than this old legend exist, and will in time occur to you. Reinspire your artist brain with one of these, or take poor Vivien from the shelf to which you have been so cruel as to consign her, and give her the form and being which she so richly deserves. It will be your wisest course, for the Unknown you will never see again. A host of gentlemen you will meet in your daily walks through the crowded streets, but among them he will not appear. I have noticed that Providence never offers the same chance to a single individual. It would be like drawing the same prize consecutively from a lottery. Very probably your

good spirits may have tried to do you a favor, by introducing you to a person who had it in his power to render you a great service; but since you were not wise enough to seize the occasion, all that you can do is to accept your loss as final, and make up your mind to bear it philosophically."

"I believe there is a great deal of truth in what you say."

"I know there is. Unless I should chance to bring him back to you, you will never see Prince Zariades again. And after all, it may be better for you not to see him. Who knows how much misery might have resulted from this chance meeting, if it had ripened into an acquaintance?"

"What do you mean?”

"How would Paul Clare like your excessive admiration of an absolute stranger? Have you not regard enough for him to prevent you from making him jealous?"

"I declare, Adèle, you are as bad as a conventional fashionable lady. Paul Clare jealous, indeed! he who is a portion, and the best portion of my own soul; he to whom I am united for all eternity, by a perfect love. How dare you compare my artistic admiration for a profile that I want to study, and my love for Paul? You are exactly like Mrs. S."

"Thank you! Mrs. S is the most hypocritical, false, affected, absurd specimen of a fair, fine lady, that I have the misfortune to know."

"And yet, had I told her my story, she would have answered me just as you have done. She called on me the other day; and while she was here, I happened to speak with admiration of Mr. L, the husband of my darling Emma. What! Mrs. Vane,' she exclaimed, clasping her hands, and lifting them to heaven in holy horror, 'can it be that you allow yourself to speak with so much admiration of another woman's husband and you engaged to Mr. Clare!' f informed her that the tenderness of my nature had been marvellously developed by my affection for Mr. Clare, and, as a natural

consequence of my increased capacity of emotion, that my affection and admiration for all my friends, ladies as well as gentlemen, had been augmented by it a thousandfold. You can imagine the sublime indignation with which she arose and left me. Poor little pitiful doll! Not only is she afraid of any expression of genuine feeling, but she is ever on the watch to misinterpret any sentiment that she does not compre hend, in some silly inexplicable fashion, the secret of which is known to herself alone. How I like to shock Mrs. S-, and the whole class of women whom she represents!"

"Remember, nevertheless,” Adèle answered, laughing, "that it is precisely among 'this class of women' that you count your principal patrons. If you give them such violent shocks that they run away, and never return to you, and do not allow their friends to return, what will become of your orders, your great pictures that are to make you so famous in the future? What of your journey to Italy, and all the success and happiness that you are to reap from it? This class of women have it in their power to blight all your pros pects."

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even of you, Adèle, or I might be tempted to be profane. If, before another year has elapsed, I cannot dispense with patrons, and command my own destiny, I will give up art, retire to a mountain in some wilderness, and live in a cave for the rest of my mortal days. For the present, let us dismiss the subject, as beneath our consideration."

Having said these words, Mrs. Vane threw herself back upon a lounge, in an attitude of superb and disdainful nonchalance, while Adèle gazed at her with mingled mirth and admiration, and made no immediate response.

There was something contradictory, both in Mrs. Vane's mental development and in her appearance. She was a strange combination of a joyous, sensu ous woman, such as Rubens would have delighted to paint, and an imprisoned Psyche. Her eyes were blue and deeply

set, with a habitual expression of flashing, sparkling merriment; and yet they were capable of the dark tragic glance of a foreboding sibyl. Over her forehead was cast a veil of pallor, the memorial of years of unuttered and unutterable grief; and yet, in spite of this signet of despair, her pale, brown hair, fine and soft complexion, coral lips, and petite features, gave her face an expression of mirthful, piquant prettiness, that was inconsistent with the unusual force of her character. She was below the middle height, and her figure, although finely and even voluptuously moulded, suggested an idea of strength and endurance, rather than of beauty. She seemed to have been designed for a larger growth, a grander development than she had succeeded in obtaining. Both her face and form indicated an ideal that they did not fully express, and the original thought of nature, the nobler soul of the woman, flashed fitfully through an imperfect embodiment, and looked almost incongruous in the inferior mould that it had actually received.

And yet Mrs. Vane's faults and imperfections were like spots upon the sun. Her power, genius, sincerity, were all her own. She possessed the rich inheritance of a free, generous, and noble nature. Her character rested upon a firm foundation of sterling qualities, that caused her to be cherished by her friends, and respected and admired even by those whom her peculiarities offended. It was impossible to see her without anticipating how much grace and tenderness might be developed in the fulness of her maturity, as the flower of that strength, the only true root of beauty, that she possessed to so ample a degree.

Adèle looked at her friend, as she sat reclining upon her couch, and these thoughts, mingled with a melancholy that she could not dissipate, floated vaguely through her mind.

"What is the meaning of all this luxury?" she said at last, with an effort to throw off her sadness, as she strolled to the table upon which Mrs. Vane had

laid her purchases. "A gipsey-hat, new dresses, a jacket, gloves, boots, a parasol! Have you had a visit from your fairy good-mother? I am jealous of her favoritism. Where did you get all this finery ? "

"If that absurd Zariades had not driven every sensible idea that I have out of my head, I should have told you before, of my good fortune. It was to inform you of it that I wished so particularly to see you. I sold one of my pictures yesterday, most unexpectedly the head, you remember, that hung over the door. It was a mere sketch, dashed off in a few days, but, really, it was not without merit. I sold it for five hundred dollars-too small a price for the picture, but a large enough sum to save me from an abyss of difficulty. I have paid my debts, bought myself a complete outfit, and yet have contrived to reserve a hundred dollars, which I shall devote to a special purpose. I am going into the country, Adèle. I shall go to D, the home of my childhood, and spend three long months in rambling about the mountains that I know so well, in rolling on the grass of my native meadows, in drinking new milk, in picking berries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, all in their season, and in eating them as well. And then I shall see my old father once more-a happiness that will itself renew my childhood. I shall have a glorious time, Adèle, and shall return, in the autumn, with better health, and the strength of a giant, able to achieve miracles. And, in truth, this respite has come just in time! Dear as my pretty studio is to me, I was beginning to feel that I could not endure, for another day, being shut up like a prisoner within its four walls. I seize the idea of this visit to the country, as a prisoner rushes forward to embrace his freedom."

She paused for a moment, and then continued, with the inconsistency of a mercurial temperament,

"After all, it may be for the best that I should be prevented from undertaking my favorite picture at present. Very probably I should fail in elabo

rating it, simply from the extreme exhaustion of my nervous vitality-my reward for a long year of excessive application. In the autumn I shall be a new being. It will be impossible for me then to fail in any thing that I undertake. Think, Adèle all this happiness, this new life, I shall receive through the agency of this little hundred dollars, shut up in this little purse! I should like to see any one get it from me! What think you of that for a miracle? Is there not something more in it than natural, if philosophy could find it out?"

"Money is, indeed, a potent magician, and I wish the miserable wizard would condescend to perform a few more of his hundred-dollar miracles, for my benefit, than he seems inclined to. But what will Mr. Clare do without you?"

"D is not on the Rocky Mountains, and neither is it in China! He will come and visit me as often as possible; and if he is prevented from leaving New York, he will resign himself to my absence. My progress is his. If it is for our mutual benefit to be separated for a time, he would consent to it, of course. He is the last person in the world who would refuse to sacrifice a temporary enjoyment for the sake of securing a higher happiness in the future."

At this moment a little clock, that hung on the wall, struck two. Adèle started, and looked up at it in surprise.

"I must go," she said. "I have a sitter at half-past two, and shall not have more than time to get to my studio, and prepare for her. I did not know it was so late."

Adèle shook hands with her warmhearted friend, and, hurrying from the room, closed the door, but almost instantly partially reopened it, and peeped in, her face radiant with smiles.

"What will you give me if I find Prince Zariades for you?"

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time did not reopen it. Her smiles ceased; the light playing over her face vanished; she became pale; tears filled her eyes, and she leaned against the wall for support.

To many favorites of fortune, sheltered from the ruder experiences of life by the protecting ties with which affection loves to surround its object, and guarded from the knowledge of want by wealth and luxury, a career like Mrs. Vane's will seem a career of privation, suffering, and danger. To Adèle, how rich it looked in hope and happiness! How poor and tame her own career seemed beside it! She had no fame to cheer her in her hours of lonely isolation, and inspire her with the glorious hope of commanding, through her own efforts, a noble and happy future; no journey to Italy in prospect; waiting to be transformed from a happy dream to a happy reality; no Paul to labor for and with, in the blissful heaven of love, thrilling the fleeting present with the satisfying completeness of eternity. Nor was she ever visited-bitterest privation of all-by the flame of artistic inspiration-the consolation of all sorrows, and compensation of all wrongsuplifting her soul from the cold, dull gloom of material realities into the sunshine of creative energy. Love! Inspiration! Why, she was denied even the privilege of spending a few months in the country, picking berries, lying on the greensward, and gazing into the blue sky. But one future could she anticipate-a future of painful, uncongenial toil, draining her nerves and brain of their vitality, only to give her life to endure suffering; a future of isolation, of petty anxieties, of neglect, and, worse than all, ennui! The life of her friend was a rainbow-tinted heaven of hope and joy, of intense anticipation and rich fruition, in comparison with the dreary desert of her exist

ence.

Adèle was a miniature-painter, and her exquisite talent was so well appreciated that she could not work rapidly enough to satisfy the demands made upon her time and strength. And yet

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