Mariana, in a burst of gratitude, had wept upon his shoulder, and he had smiled as he patted her prostrate head. "Remember," he said, "that you are an artist first, and a wife and mother afterwards, and you will succeed." Sitting beside the window and staring at the expressionless tenements across the way, she laughed with soft insistence at the professor's warning. What a consuming force was love, that it had destroyed her old mad longing for the stage! Was it all love, or was it only the love of Anthony? Then before her, in the train of her thoughts, the sentiments of her life were limned vividly, and she remembered the young highwayman whose picture she had seen. She saw the bold, Byronic countenance, with the shadow of evil upon the lips and the uncultured eyes. She recalled the blur by which the printer had obscured the chin, and she felt again the tremor with which she had awaited the sentence of the court. She thought of Edgardo, the romantic tenor, of his impassioned arias, and then of his fat and immobile face, of his red-cheeked German wife, to whom he was a faithful husband, and of his red-cheeked German children, to whom he was a devoted father. She laughed again as she remembered the tears with which she had bedewed her pillow, and the spasm of jealousy in which she had mentally attacked the prima donna. Last of all she thought of Jerome Ardly, as she had seen him upon the night of her arrival, sitting in indolent discussion of his dinner, the _Evening Post_ spread out upon his knee. She experienced in memory the thrill which had seized her at his voice. She remembered how strong and masterful he had looked with the glow of heart disease, which she had thought the glow of health, upon his face. Then her thoughts returned to Anthony and settled to rest. To dwell upon him was as if she had laid her head upon his arm and felt his hand above her heart; as if she had anchored herself in deep waters, far beyond the breakers and shallows of life. In the next room she knew that Anthony was at work, that he had probably, for the time being, forgotten her existence. The knowledge caused her a twinge of pain, and she went to the door, opened it, and looked in. Algarcife glanced up absently. "You don't wish anything, do you?" he inquired, and she saw that an irritable mood was upon him, "I can't be interrupted." "It is nothing," answered Mariana as she closed the door, but she felt a sudden tightening of the heart, and, as she gathered up several loose sheets of music lying upon the floor, she thought, with a spasm of regretful pain, of the practising she had given up. "He does not know," she said, and a few tears fell upon the key-board. That night, when she was dressing for Nevins's supper, she noticed that there was a faint flush in her cheeks and her hands were hot. "We lead such a quiet life," she said, laughing, "that a very little thing excites me."