"You are unkind to me." Her manner had grown subtly personal. He felt suddenly as if he had known her from the beginning of time and through various transmigrations. "You laugh at me," she added. "You were kinder to that woman--" He broke in upon her, perplexity giving place to amusement. "Oh!" he said; "so that is what you mean! Why, if you were to lose your hat, I shouldn't laugh, I assure you." Mariana walked on silently. Her eyes were bent upon the gray sidewalk, there was a faint flush in her face. A line of men seated upon the benches beside the way surveyed her with interest. "Miss Musin!" Her face quickened. "I have a confession to make." She looked up inquiringly. A finger of sunlight pierced the branches of an elm and pointed to her upraised face. "I have rather bad manners," he went on. "It is a failing which you must accept as you accept the color of my hair--" Mariana smiled. "I say just what I think," he added. Mariana frowned. "That is what I complain of," she responded. Then she laughed so brightly that a tiny child, toddling with a toy upon the walk, looked up and clapped its hands. His eyes warmed. "But you will take me for better or for worse?" he demanded. "Could it be better?" she asked, demurely. "That is a matter of opinion." They left the park and turned into a cross-town street. The distant blocks sloped down into the blue blur of the river, from which several gaunt, gray masts rose like phantom wrecks evolved from the mist. Beyond them the filmy outline of the opposite shore was revealed. Suddenly Mariana stopped. "This is Morani's, and I must go in." She held out her hand. "How is the voice?" he asked. "I am nursing it. Some day you shall hear it." "I have heard it," he responded. She smiled. "Oh, I forgot. You are next door. Well, some day you shall hear it in opera." "Shall I?" "And I shall sing Elsa with Alvary. My God! I would give ten years of my life for that--to sing with Alvary." He smiled at the warmth in her words and, as he smiled he became conscious that her artistic passion ignited the fire of a more material passion in himself. A fugitive desire seized him to possess the woman before him, body and brain. From the quivering of his pulses he knew that the physical nature he had drugged had stirred in response to a passing appeal. "Good-bye," said Mariana. She tripped lightly up the brown-stone steps. As she opened the outer door she turned with a smile and a nod. Then the door closed and he went on his way. But the leaping of his pulses was not appeased. CHAPTER VIII One morning, several days later, Mariana, looking from her window, saw Anthony standing upon the fire-escape. He had thrown a handful of crumbs to a swarm of noisy sparrows quarrelling about his feet.