She had never used that name before, and it so thrilled him with joy and pain that he made an impulsive movement as if once more to take her in his arms; but she lifted her hand with a gesture of negation. "I have been tempted as well as you," she continued, "I have said to myself a thousand times that love justified all, and that these theories were too fine spun. I could not keep the thought of you down even when I first knew I was a widow, and I said over and over to myself that now no one stood between us. I knew it was no use, but I lay awake in the night and tried to prove to myself that Ninitta had no claim,--but, oh! you are too much to me for me to be willing that you should do what we both know is wrong and cruel. I can endure anything better than that you should not always be my ideal; and I should hate myself if I tempted you to wrong." "What I am," he said brokenly, moved most of all by the tears upon her cheeks, "is nothing. You have beaten this temptation, not I; I would have done any thing if you had encouraged me. I am a very ordinary mortal, Helen, when one really knows my littleness." She smiled through her tears at him. "You shall not abuse yourself;" she replied. "I will not have it." There was not much further said between them. They remained together until the dusk filled the studio, and it looked again like a ghost-world as on the morning they two had come into it to see the dead form modeled in red clay. Perhaps it was upon this remembrance that at length Mrs. Greyson said: "Will you give me, before I go to Europe, that figure you showed me?" "I will give you any thing you ask," he answered; "I wish I might add myself. Is it right," he added, with sudden fire, "for me to tie myself to that model girl? Am I worth nothing better than that?" "You are worth the best woman on earth; but--oh I cannot argue it, but I feel it; I am sure that it cannot be right to deny the claim which you yourself gave her, Grant. I know by myself what it would be to lose you." "But she is not the woman you are. Her feelings are those of an ignorant peasant; she--" Helen laid her fingers lightly upon his lips. "No," she said, "don't go on. We have said it all once. You are trying to out-argue your own convictions. I must go now. It is almost dark already." She took a step or two towards the door and again laid her hand upon the rug _portiêre_. Then as by a common impulse they turned towards each other, and once more she was locked in his embrace. And to-night, sitting alone in the dark, with dilated eyes, Helen felt still the ecstasy of that moment, but murmured to herself: "It must not be again; I will not see him alone." XXXV. PARTED OUR FELLOWSHIP. Othello; ii.--I. Tom Bently's studio that night was a sight well worth seeing.