The lady assented. Had Mr. Longcluse ever felt happier? CHAPTER XI. THE TELEGRAM ARRIVES. Mr. Longcluse placed the little oval enamel, set in gold, in Miss Arden's fingers, and held the lamp beside her while she looked. "How beautiful!--how very interesting!" she exclaimed. "What suffering in those thin, handsome features! What a strange enthusiasm in those large hazel eyes! I could fancy that monk the maddest of lovers, the most chivalric of saints. And did he really suffer that incredible fate? Did he really die of love?" "So they say. But why incredible? I can quite imagine that wild shipwreck, seeing what a raging sea love is, and how frail even the strongest life." "Well, I can't say, I am sure. But your own novelists laugh at the idea of any but women--whose business it is, of course, to pay that tribute to their superiors--dying of love. But if any man could die such a death, he must be such as this picture represents. What a wild, agonised picture of passion and asceticism! What suicidal devotion and melancholy rapture! I confess I could almost fall in love with that picture myself." "And I think, were I he, I could altogether die to earn one such sentence, so spoken," said Mr. Longcluse. "Could you lend it to me for a very few days?" asked the young lady. "As many--as long as you please. I am only too happy." "I should so like to make a large drawing of this in chalks!" said Alice, still gazing on the miniature. "You draw so beautifully in chalks! Your style is not often found here--your colouring is so fine." "Do you really think so?" "You must know it, Miss Arden. You are too good an artist not to suspect what everyone else must see, the real excellence of your drawings. Your colouring is better understood in France. Your master, I fancy, was a Frenchman?" said Mr. Longcluse. "Yes, he was, and we got on very well together. Some of his young lady pupils were very much afraid of him." "Your poetry is fired by that picture, Miss Arden. Your copy will be a finer thing than the original," said he. "I shall aim only at making it a faithful copy; and if I can accomplish anything like that, I shall be only too glad." "I hope you will allow me to see it?" pleaded Longcluse. "Oh, certainly," she laughed. "Only I'm a little afraid of you, Mr. Longcluse." "What can you mean, Miss Arden?" "I mean, you are so good a critic in art, every one says, that I really _am_ afraid of you," answered the young lady, laughing. "I should be very glad to forfeit any little knowledge I have, if it were attended with such a misfortune," said Longcluse. "But I don't flatter; I tell you truly, a critic has only to admire, when he looks at your drawings; they are quite above the level of an amateur's work." "Well, whether you mean it or not, I _am_ very much flattered," she laughed. "And though wise people say that flattery spoils one, I can't help thinking it very agreeable to be flattered."