She treated the young men whom she met in society with a courtly ease and freedom, but her smiles and repartee ever seemed like brilliant moonlight that had no warmth; and, while no restraint appeared, she still kept all at a distance. There was a marked difference in her intercourse with Dennis. Regarding him as too humble ever to presume upon her frankness, she daily spoke more freely, and more truly acted out herself before him. She was happy and in her element among the beautiful works of art they were arranging, and in this atmosphere her womanly nature, chilled and dwarfed though it was, would often manifest itself in ways sweet and unexpected. Under no other circumstances could she have appeared so well. She as often spoke to herself in racy comment on what was before her as to Dennis, and ever and anon would make some pleasant remark to him, as she might throw a dainty morsel to her greyhound Wolf, looking wistfully at her while she dined. At the same time it must be confessed that she had a growing respect for him, as she daily saw some new proof of his intelligence and taste; but both education and disposition inclined her instinctively to the old feudal idea that even genius, if poor, must wait a humble servitor on wealth and rank, and where a New England girl would have been saying to herself, "This gifted, educated man is my equal, and, whether I want to or not, I ought to treat him as such," she was not troubled at all. To her, he was her father's clerk and man-of-all-work, a most useful, trusted, and agreeable servant, and she was kind to him as such. Indeed the little autocrat was kind to every one that pleased her. She was a benign queen to obedient subjects, but woe to those who were otherwise. To Dennis, however, though he realized it not, she was becoming as the very apple of his eye. He was learning to regard her with a deeper interest because of the very defects that he plainly recognized. While on the one hand he had the enthusiastic love caused by his admiration for her, on the other he felt the tenderer and greater love which was the result of pity. He tried to account for his feelings toward her by the usual sophistries of unconscious lovers. It was friendship; it was artistic interest in her beauty; it was the absorbing, unselfish regard of a Christian for one providentially commended to him to be led out of darkness into light. How could he help thinking of one for whom he prayed night and morning and every hour in the day? It was all this, but he was soon to learn that it was a great deal more. And so the days of occupation and companionship passed; the spell worked on with increasing and bewildering power, and the crisis could not be delayed much longer.