She turned, and saw Glyndon. The sight of his fair young face calmed her at once. She did not love him, yet his sight gave her pleasure. She had for him a kind and grateful feeling. Ah, if she had never beheld Zicci! "Isabel," said the Englishman, drawing her again to the bench from which she had risen, and seating himself beside her, "you know how passionately I love thee. Hitherto thou hast played with my impatience and my ardor, thou hast sometimes smiled, sometimes frowned away my importunities for a reply to my suit; but this day--I know not how it is--I feel a more sustained and settled courage to address thee, and learn the happiest or the worst. I have rivals, I know,--rivals who are more powerful than the poor artist. Are they also more favored?" Isabel blushed faintly, but her countenance was grave and distressed. Looking down, and marking some hieroglyphical figures in the dust with the point of her slipper, she said, with some hesitation and a vain attempt to be gay, "Signor, whoever wastes his thoughts on an actress must submit to have rivals. It is our unhappy destiny not to be sacred even to ourselves." "But you have told me, Isabel, that you do not love this destiny, glittering though it seem,--that your heart is not in the vocation which your talents adorn." "Ah, no!" said the actress, her eyes filling with tears, "it is a miserable lot to be slave to a multitude." "Fly then with me," said the artist, passionately. "Quit forever the calling that divides that heart I would have all my own. Share my fate now and forever,--my pride, my delight, my ideal! Thou shalt inspire my canvas and my song, thy beauty shall be made at once holy and renowned. In the galleries of princes crowds shall gather round the effigy of a Venus or a saint, and a whisper shall break forth, 'It is Isabel di Pisani!' Ah! Isabel, I adore thee: tell me that I do not worship in vain." "Thou art good and fair," said Isabel, gazing on her lover as he pressed his cheek nearer to hers, and clasped her hand in his. "But what should I give thee in return?" "Love, love; only love!" "A sister's love?" "Ah, speak not with such cruel coldness!" "It is all I have for thee. Listen to me, signor. When I look on your face, when I hear your voice, a certain serene and tranquil calm creeps over and lulls thoughts, oh, how feverish, how wild! When thou art gone, the day seems a shade more dark; but the shadow soon flies. I miss thee not, I think not of thee,--no, I love thee not; and I will give myself only where I love." "But I would teach thee to love me,--fear it not. Nay, such love as thou now describest in our tranquil climates is the love of innocence and youth." "And it is the innocence he would destroy," said Isabel, rather to herself than to him. Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.