"LESLIE," she wrote, "your letters have kept coming and coming, and every one has been like a stab to my heart. I pray you never to write to me again, for I have repented in bitterness of spirit the blind folly into which you led me that night. Oh, how could you do it? I was but a child. I did not know what love meant, and I was bewildered and carried away by your handsome face, and the romance of that moonlight flitting. It was wicked, it was cruel, Leslie, to bind me so, for, oh, God, I _love_ another now, and I never can be his! But at least I will _never_ be yours. I have burned your letters, and I shall hate your memory as long I live for the cruel wrong you did me. God forgive you, for I never can! "BONNIBEL." Leslie Dane threw that dreadful letter down and ground it beneath his heel as though it had been a deadly serpent. It was, for it had stung him to the heart. Carl Muller looked up at the strange sound of that grinding boot-heel, and saw his friend standing fixedly staring, into vacancy, his dark eyes blazing like coals of fire, his handsome face pallid as death, and set in a tense look of awful despair and bitterness terrible to behold. Carl Muller sprang up and shook him violently by the arm. "My God! Leslie," he cried, "what is it? What has happened to move you so? Is there anyone dead?" The handsome artist did not seem to hear him. He stood immovable save for the horrid crunching of his boot-heel as it ground that fatal letter into fragments. "Leslie," exclaimed Carl, "speak, for mercy's sake! You cannot imagine how horrible you look!" Thus adjured Leslie Dane shook off his friend's clasp roughly, and strode across the room to a recess where a veiled picture hung against the wall. He had always refused to show it to his brother artist, but now he pushed the covering aside, disclosing a female head surrounded by silvery clouds like that of an angel. The face, framed in waving masses of golden hair, was lighted by eyes of tender violet, and radiantly beautiful. "Look Carl," said the artist in a changed and hollow voice, "is not that the face of an angel?" Carl Muller looked at the lovely face in wonder and delight. "Beautiful, beautiful!" he exclaimed, "it is the face of a seraph!" "Yes, it is the face of a seraph," repeated Leslie Dane. "The face of a seraph, but oh, God, she is _fickle_, _faithless_, _false_!" He stood still a moment looking at the fair young face smiling on him in its radiant beauty, then caught up his brush and swept it across the canvas. One touch, the tender blue eyes were obliterated, another, and the curved red lips were gone with their loving smile, another and another, and the whole angelic vision was blotted from the canvas forever. CHAPTER XII.