Over her face came an inexplicable expression, which might be gloom or exultation, and the tone in which she spoke was equally difficult of interpretation. She seemed determined, however, to fall into no snares of speech; she smiled upon the sculptor with a glance at once radiant and perplexing. She turned towards the new vase and began slowly to whirl the modeling-stand upon which Herman had placed it. A thousand reflections danced and flickered about the little room as it revolved in the sunlight, glowing and glittering like the sparkles from a carcanet of jewels. The fiery monsters seemed to twine and coil in living motion as the light shone upon their emerald and golden scales and bristling spines. "I wonder if Eve's serpent was so splendid," Mrs. Greyson laughed, twirling the stand yet faster upon its pivot. "Would I do for Mother Eve, do you think?" "If the power to tempt a man be the test," he retorted with an odd brusqueness quite disproportionate to the apparent lightness of the occasion, the dark blood mantling his face, "there can be no doubt of it." A swift change came over her at his words. She left the vase and stand abruptly. She flushed crimson then grew pale and looked about her with a half frightened glance, as if uncertain which way to turn. The movement touched her companion as no words could have done. "I beg your pardon," he muttered. And with a still deeper flush on his swarthy cheek he turned abruptly and quitted the room. IV. AFTER SUCH A PAGAN CUT. Henry VIII.; i.--3. "In the first place," said Edith Caldwell brightly, "you know, Arthur, that I ought not to be in Boston at all, when I have so much to see to at home; and in the second place Aunt Calvin is shocked at the unconventionality of my being seen any where in public after the wedding cards are out; but I was determined to see this picture. I saw it when he had just begun it in Paris, you know, three years ago." "As for being seen," Arthur Fenton returned, "we certainly shall never be seen here. The Art Museum is the most solitary place in the city; and as for conventionalities, why, the wedding is so quiet and so far off that I think nobody here even realizes that the stupendous event is imminent at all." "Oh, but I do," Edith said, laughing and clasping her hands with a pretty gesture of mock despair. "I feel that the day of my bondage is advancing with unfaltering tread, like the day of doom." "Then you should do as I do by the day of doom, disbelieve in it altogether until it comes." "It is of no use. Even disbelief will not alter the almanac, as you'll find when the day of doom swoops down on you."