The darkness grew. The phantom faded imperceptibly away. He was left alone in the darkness to fight out his battle. He marched with great strides, avoiding obstacles by a certain sixth sense born of constant familiarity with the place. He fought manfully, persuading himself that his scruples were as idle as air, remnants of the long since outgrown superstitions of his childhood. He defiantly claimed the right to be true to his powers, to his genius, rather than to an empirical standard erected by narrow moralists. He should be thankful that he had escaped entangling his life by that absurd marriage in Rome seven years ago, and that he was now free to win a wife worthy Of himself and of his art. Yet he cut through all the meshes of logic he had himself been weaving, by striking his strong hands together there in the dark, and crying aloud, his voice startling him in the stillness: "My God! What a poltroon I have become! Shall I cast on others the burden of my own mistakes?" And seizing hat and cloak he left the studio, taking his way towards the narrow street where Ninitta lodged, hastening to ask her to marry him before his resolution faltered. XVII. THIS "WOULD" CHANGES. Hamlet; iv.--7. Herman found Ninitta alone in the attic which served her for a home in this bleak northern city, so far and so different from her own sunny Capri. Bare and half furnished as was the room, the girl had contrived to impart to it a certain air which removed it from the common-place. A bit of flimsy drapery, begged from some studio, hung over one of the windows; a rude print of the Madonna was pinned to the wall, and under it, on the wooden table, was a bunch of withered flowers. They were roses which Helen had given Ninitta, and the Italian, returning home that day, had in her jealous rage thrown them to the floor and trampled upon them. Then remembering that they had been offered to the Madonna, she had been seized with a superstitious fear, and carefully restoring the battered flowers, had eagerly vowed a fresh bunch to the Holy Mother if she might be forgiven this sacrilege. But the most beautiful article in the room was a cast of a woman's shoulder. It had been modeled by Herman in the earliest days of his acquaintance with Ninitta, when she had been still only his model and not his betrothed. He was touched as he looked at it now. Yellow with time and soiled by its various journeyings, it still preserved unmarred its lovely shape, exquisite curve melting into exquisite curve as softly and sweetly as in those glowing days when he had molded it under the sky of Italy.