excitement, everybody will cluster round me, he will efface himself or be effaced, and, even if he finds anybody to talk to, it is about me he will talk. Invitations to our own 'At Homes' will be eagerly sought for--not for his sake, but for mine. All that is famous in literature and art will crowd our salon--not for his sake, but for mine. And while I shall be the cynosure of every eye, it will be his to note down the names of the illustrious gazers in society paragraphs beginning Mrs. John Beveridge (Andrew Dibdin), alternating with Andrew Dibdin (Mrs. John Beveridge). And am I to give up all this, merely because I love you?" [Illustration: _So ran my Innocent Maiden Dream._] "Yes, why not!" he said passionately. "What is fame, reputation, weighed against love? What is it to be on the World's lips, if the lips we love are to be taken away?" "How pretty!" she said with simple admiration. "If you will not claim the phrase, I should like to give it to my next heroine." "Claim it!" he said bitterly. "I do not want any phrases. I want you." "Do you not see it is impossible? If you could become obscure again, it might be. You say fame is nothing weighed against love. Come now, would you give up your genius, your reputation, just to marry me?" He was silent. "Come!" she repeated. "I have been frank with you, have I not!" "You have," he admitted, with a melancholy grimace. "Well, be equally frank with me. Would you sacrifice these things to your love for me?" "I could not if I would." "But would you, if you could?" He did not answer. "Of course you wouldn't," she said. "I know you as I know myself." "What is the use of thinking of what can never be!" he said impatiently. "Just so. That is what I say. I can never give you my hand; so give me yours and we'll turn homewards." He gave her his hand and she jumped lightly to her feet. Then he got up and shook himself, and looked still in a sort of daze, at the gentle face and the dainty figure. He seized her passionately by the arms. "And must this be the end?" he cried hoarsely. "Finis," she said decisively, though the renewed pallor of her face showed what it cost her to complete the idyl. "An unhappy ending?" he said in hopeless interrogation. "It is not my style," she said simply, "but, after all, this is only real life." He burst forth in a torrent of half reproachful regrets--he, Addiper, the chaste, the severe, the self-contained. "And you the sweet, innocent girl who won the heart I no longer hoped to feel living, you would coldly abandon the love for whose existence you are responsible! You, who were to be so fresh and pure an influence on my work, are content to deprive literature of those masterpieces our union would have called into being! Oh, but you cannot unshackle yourself thus from my life--for good or evil your meeting with me determined my third manner. Hitherto I thought it was for good; now I fear it will be for evil."