"So you love Miss Challoner," he said genially. "Well, I can hardly wonder at that. To tell you the truth, I fell in love with her myself--merely in an artistic sense, I assure you," added the astute artist with a laugh as he saw the anger in Nestley's face. "She has a lovely face which seems to wear the calm of those old Greek statues. I should like to paint her as Artemis--the inviolate Artemis before she loved Endymion--with the serene light of chastity on her face and the sweetness of night in her eyes. It would be a wonderful picture." "I wonder you don't ask her to be your model," growled Nestley, sulkily. "Hardly worth while, for two reasons," replied Beaumont lightly, yet with a suspicion of regret in his tone. "In the first place she would refuse, and in the second, my hand has lost its cunning. One needs to be young and enthusiastic to paint a classical picture. I am of too earthy a nature to have such hopeless visions. Well, are you going to play the part of young Endymion to this moon goddess?" "No," answered Nestley bitterly, "she won't have anything to do with me." "Poor Endymion!" "Don't be a fool, talking such classical stuff! I tell you I'm madly in love with her, and she won't have anything to do with me. Everything is against me. I'm poor, unloved and obscure. Life isn't worth living under such conditions." He looked again at the sparkling wine, which seemed to invite him to try it as an anodyne for his pain. Everything seemed to his distorted imagination to be dull and dark. Wine would at least give him a few hours' respite from these torturing thoughts. He was master of himself now. He would drink one glass and no more. After all, seeing that everything was lost, what did it matter if he did fall once more? He had nothing to live for now. A wild despair took possession of his heart, and with a reckless laugh he seized the glass and finished the wine to the last drop. "_Evohé Bacchus_," said Beaumont, draining his glass. "There's nothing like wine to cure a broken heart." The insidious wine mounted rapidly to the excitable brain of the young man, and he no longer felt regret at breaking the pledge he had made five years before. The humdrum past of struggle and respectability was done with. Wine would solace him. Drink! Who cared for such a thing? Anacreon was the head of a glorious band of poets, and praised the wine. Wise Anacreon, he knew the true virtues of the grape. The past is dead, the future is uncertain. Live--live only in the present, with wine to make us as gods--_Evohé Bacchus_. The stimulating wine had performed its work excellently, and the world hitherto so gloomy now appeared of a roseate tint. "A broken heart!" he repeated, with a gay laugh. "Pish! hearts don't break so easily. A woman's no means yes. I'll ask again." "Nothing like perseverance," said Basil, observing with infinite joy the flushed face and bright eyes of the young man. "Have some more wine?"