"Ah, Dita," his voice fell to a charming note of tenderness, a note to stir any woman's heart, with the purple and white of the wistaria clusters swaying above their heads and the mellow light reflected in his eyes, his eager eyes which pierced life's stained and sordid curtain and saw the wonder and miracle of beauty; and it was this power to discern the eternal vision which illuminated his ugly, irregular, fascinating face upon which work and dreams and experience had stamped their impress. "You can not fancy what it means to me to paint your portrait now. I've painted it before, crudely, in boyhood, and experienced then a casual delight in the effort to portray a beautiful thing, and wrest a few new secrets of art from the portrayal. That was all. But now," his voice without being raised, yet lifted exultantly, "but now--my heart is swept with insurgent seas at the thought of what it means. I am lover and artist, fused in a fire of white enthusiasm. The lover sees, divines what the artist can only guess at, and the artist offers to the lover a perfected technique. I feel the stirring of this power to catch your loveliness, Dita, and fix it on canvas imperishably. It would be the great achievement. That is in the background of every artist's thoughts. It is his pillar of cloud by day and his pillar of fire by night. The great achievement!" He dreamed over it a moment. "I would paint the South in you, Dita, 'warm and sweet and fickle is the South.' Ah! I thought I loved you then. I thought I loved you the evening we parted, but I know now that I have never really loved you before or I could not have given you up." They were almost alone, nearly every one had left the room. A long trail of wistaria blew before her eyes. The light glowed through the silken, yellow shades. The South! She smelled roses and jasmine. It seemed to her for one bewildering moment as if her heart had indeed blossomed in purple and red. She smiled lingeringly, sweetly into his eyes. "The portrait's only postponed, Eugene, look at it in that way." The words recalled her to herself with a start. This was paper wistaria and electric light. She was no longer a girl in a flower-scented, green old garden about to pose for a boyish and impatient artist. Here she was, in spite of all her vows to the contrary, yielding to Eugene's spell without a struggle. She was quite sure of his charm and magnetism, but what she doubted now was her own heart. "'Ah, the little more and how much it is. And the little less, and what worlds away,'" she murmured beneath her breath, wondering unhappily if she were born to doubt everything. "But I can't and I won't submit to a postponement." He was now both impatient and impassioned.