“Tut! swear not at all. It’s not likely you have ever seen her before to-night. Perhaps she corresponds with some fairy-queen or lady-love born of your own prolific fancy. Is it not so? I can well conceive such a thing possible, though I’m neither poet nor artist.” Martin bowed to save himself from the necessity of a reply, for he was deep in thought, and through the obscurity of the distant Past his memory was striving to grope her way. After a few moments the singer appeared again in the saloon. “Did you say her name is Alice?” asked Martin Gray, as his eyes for the second time rested upon her. “Alice—Alice what?” “I have never heard—she is only known by that name. She does not need so many cognomens as we less gifted individuals, and I suppose intends that the world shall know without being told further, who is meant when the singer _Alice_ is spoken of.” “Dundas, I have seen that face before, you may depend upon it—will you believe it? during all my residence in Europe I have sought with desperate earnestness, but in vain, for a face just such as hers.” “Pray wherefore? Are you not the sworn foe of all lady-loves save the sweet goddess of painting?” “Hush! love has had nothing to do with my search—pretty faces are to be found every where; and though an artist, I am free to say the man who marries a woman for her beauty is a poor fool. Did you ever see my picture called Sunrise, painted seven or eight years ago?” “Remember it? Why, my dear fellow, to be sure I do, and what a grand lift it gave you before the ‘darling public;’ I would be stupid indeed to forget that picture or its author. A copy of it has been the best ornament of my room for years!” “Well, perhaps you know—though of course you could not, for I never spoke of my intention to another—but ever since that picture was finished, I have determined to make it one of a series, by painting two others, one of such innocent loveliness arrived at womanly perfection, and the third was to be the image of crime, or beauty ruined; and the three I hoped to offer a moral lesson to the world. Never till to-night have I seen one worthy to take the second place in the series. I see her now, and I have an impression that amounts almost to a conviction, that this woman is that child.” “She lives on Tenth street. If it is your wish we will visit her to-night when the concert is finished, or to-morrow—perhaps, however, you would prefer calling upon her alone?” said Frank Dundas with a hearty co-operating look of voice and manner. “By all means accompany me—we will go in the morning, and I will lay my life on it, that singer’s name, when a child, was Alice Flynn!” * * * * *