said Roland.

"Doesn't it you, Eve? It has a wonderful charm for me, that quiet intensity of all he does."

"I feel as if I have never looked at his pictures," said Evelyn, her gaze losing itself in the wide glassy sweep of the lonely sea and the depths of the soft, awful sky. Then, as she turned round again to Roland, "Roland, I want to say what I think of the Lamia, but I cannot." Her eyes and her voice spoke for her.

"You really like it, Eve? It is very faulty, but I am glad you find something in it."

"Oh! it is wonderful--the very truth!" She had forgotten her silence, as her gaze met his.

"Thank you," he answered, quietly. Then they went back to where Mr. Breynton was standing. "Max," said Roland, "we heard a beautiful criticism of your

work. That very stout old lady in the red bonnet said, 'Well, she had never seen the sea look like that.'"

"You should have answered like Turner, 'Didn't she wish she could?'" said Evelyn. "I wonder where Miss Anley is?" "I see her in the next room," said

Roland.

"Did she tell you how we met

at the Fields'?"

"Yes. I am glad you know her," Evelyn forced herself to feel the words as she spoke. "I knew you would think her beautiful."

"It does not need much thought."

"I don't know about that," said Max. "It is a face which depends very much on the mood and nature of the beholder. I can imagine some people not admiring it at all."

"Does that mean that you don't?"

"No; she is very handsome and strange.

I like to look at her, but I fancy her face might tire."

"I don't agree with you," said Roland, rather impatiently. "There is too much real beauty in it for that."

Max moved rather irritably; there was no need for him to be angered. Roland had drawn no comparison between Gertrude Anley and Evelyn, yet Breynton felt as though there were an implied slight of the latter in Roland's warmth on the subject of Miss Anley's beauty.

He left the Academy before Mr. Trench did, and all along Piccadilly he held before him the face of Evelyn Goring, with its patient, wistful expression, which even her maidenliness could not hide, as she had looked at Roland and Miss Anley. "Is this what has been the matter with the fellow for the last fortnight?" thought Max. "I couldn't think what was up with

him, he hasn't been like himself. He can't have gone mad on that woman's face all of a sudden, after all he has said? Beauty! her face is worth a thousand of that other's. He can't be such a fool!

Why shouldn't he be, though? What are

we all, but

My God! if it is so,

I'm afraid she'll feel it worse than I can

think."

CHAPTER VIII.

"That voice which I did more esteem
Than music in her sweetest key,
Those eyes which unto me did seem
More comfortable than the day;
Those now by me as they have been
Shall never more be heard or seen;
But what I once enjoyed in them
Shall seem hereafter as a dream."

GEORGE WITHER.

THROUGH the next month Evelyn Goring, as it were, held her breath, seeing her cherished hope float further and further out of sight, feeling more and more clearly that Roland had never loved her, in the knowledge that he loved Gertrude Anley.

And through this month Roland was