But by this time she had enjoyed her freedom long enough to have been sometimes forced to admit, with a quiet sigh, that the longed-for happiness was not so overpowering that it relieved the soul of all other desires. What she really did want she did not know. She fancied that, if she only had a talent of some sort, it would fill this yearning emptiness within her. Since she believed it to be too late for her to take up music or drawing, she hit upon the idea of writing down her thoughts and moods in free rhythmic forms of her own invention. These were by no means the usual imitations of well-known lyric poets, in the conventional and occasionally much-abused metres and stanzas. What she wrote in her secret diary bore about the same relation to this conventional poetry that the play of the wind upon an Æolian harp does to a sonnet. But for all that it was an unspeakable comfort to her, when she felt that she was striking melodious chords within her lonely soul, to listen to the rise and fall of this melody of thoughts, and to transcribe it as well as she was able. The secrecy with which she pursued this art lent it an additional charm; and many a lonely evening hour was thus whiled away, as quickly and happily as if it had been spent in the company of an intimate friend, to whom she could have poured out her innermost heart. But now, when she had reached her home, and had hurriedly closed the blinds that she might brood in absolute silence and solitude over what had happened, she felt a sudden shock pass through her heart as she reflected that during the past week her thoughts had more than once been busy with the audacious man who had dared this theft of her beauty--ay, that he had even entered more than once into her secret poems. She had not given much more thought to this than to the other subjects she had touched on in her diary: merely that she had made one more acquaintance, and that of a man who could scarcely be said to have an everyday face, and to whom all the others in his circle conceded the first rank without a moment's jealousy. But was it not a singular coincidence that, at the very time when she was attempting to describe the impression that he had made upon her, he should be engaged in moulding the image of her own features? She rose thoughtfully to go to her writing-desk. She was obliged to pass by the glass, and she stood before it for a while earnestly contemplating her reflection, with the same sort of curiosity she would have shown had she never seen herself before, but had just had her attention drawn to herself by some third person. But, at the moment, she was not at all pleased with her appearance. The face of the Eve seemed to her fancy a thousand times more beautiful; he himself would be forced to admit this if he should see her and compare her, face to face, with his work. "Ten years ago," she said to herself, with a shake of the head, "I may, perhaps, have looked like that. Oh, for the beautiful lost years!"