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Pardon, Monsieur,' answered the uncle. I too hope that we shall be good neighbours.'

"After a few expressions of courtesy on both sides, I left them.

"Now, as you know, I am pretty well acquainted with Bohemia in all its tracts, and the old violinist is no new character to me. I understand him thoroughly. It is the old story-the man being forced by circumstances rather than talent into that artist-life which, when it once lays hold of a man, never lets him go. Have you not seen, a hundred times over, that type of man, without anything like common sense or common prudence, running wildly, on account of some vague promise, and without means, say from Milan to Dresden, and then disgusted if he is lucky enough to find himself able to keep body and soul together? May I not even add that we too know something of such things from our own experience of ourselves? I have weathered the storm now, and am entitled to preach.

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And so, my dear Frank, I have not sent you this long story without a moral. I will not set it out in full, but it comes to this return to England, and share, so far as may be, the fortunes of your friend,

"EDWARD MAURICE."

CHAPTER IV.

EDWARD MAURICE was perfectly right in his estimate of the violinist. Salvi was a hanger-on of Art—a man of sufficient technical skill to be able to make a sorry living by it, but without a particle of genius, and - what was worse without the self-knowledge which alone could have improved, or

even have made him accept, his position. His brother had been a man of a higher order; though also without genius, he had appreciated himself more justly, and had cultivated himself better as a musician. Though not a great artist himself, he knew what was requisite for the formation of a great artist, and had believed with truth that he had found all the material upon which to work in his only child, Antonia. From his earnings, which were never large, he had spent freely upon her musical education whatever he could possibly spare, and the one dream of his toiling life had been to give her a sound and thorough training, and to bring her out upon the lyric stage. Antonia had entered heart and soul into all her father's plans. She had acquired from the influence of all the circumstances which had surrounded her from her earliest years an intense passion for musical art, and especially for that branch of it which belongs to the drama. But from nature she had acquired much more than this. She had that mysterious, that divine faculty which certainly exists in some independently of circumstance, of culture, even of intellect itself, and of whose source and nature we are ignorant, which, for want of a better and more exact knowledge, we vaguely and insufficiently call genius. But genius itself requires culture to produce Art. The most expressive voice that ever sang, the most perfect musical instinct, the most divinely inspired soul, must still be taught and trained; and the finer and subtler the material, the more skilful must be the hand, and the more elaborate the process, that is required to weave it into shape. Antonia Salvi was, at an early age, a formed woman physically and mentally- for she was of southern race, and artistic genius is ever precocious—of magnificent capabilities, of intense impulses, of grand natural gifts; but she required that culture which can only be gained in the beaten trackthe technicalities, the restraints, the traditions, and the useful, if not altogether necessary, conventionalities of art. Such was the utter want of worldly tact and knowledge of herself and of her present protectors, that it seemed probable that, unless some most unlooked-for piece of good fortune should befall her, she would be doomed to waste her great talents upon some obscure stage, or in endeavouring to teach the rudiments of an art with which she herself was imperfectly acquainted. At present the chorus of the Dresden theatre seemed to be her inevitable doom.

Her want of personal beauty was also against her in a professional point of view;

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At Dresden she had no means whatever of self-cultivation-not even access to a musical instrument- and almost all her time was taken up in attending to the domestic affairs of the little household. These affairs were small and trivial, it is true, but Antonia, though a woman, was an exceedingly bad manager, and the worst possible of economists; worse, even, than her uncle himself, if that might be. She was always in some difficulty or making some blunder, and her very imperfect knowledge of German did not make her troubles less. The number of tears that she shed in the course of a week over silbergroschen that would never come right would have sufficed for a dozen funerals. Her uncle was always out of doors—not that that made any difference and her aunt was quite incapable of doing anything but eating, drinking, smiling placidly, and going to sleep.

It may be well supposed that this manner of life was not likely to render poor Antonia more attractive in appearance or in manner than before. She grew worse dressed and more careless about herself she had never been very conspicuous for neatness, or for the time or trouble that she spent upon her dress or person-sallower, thinner in the face, darker under the eyes, and less upright of carriage. She also grew more nervous and irritable, though she never showed this to her uncle or aunt, and more shy and silent than ever. But nothing injured the beauty of her voice or of her eyes.

Her voice was singularly clear and strong, with the soft and mellow fulness that never belongs to the true soprano, and the peculiar kind of sweetness with which the women of Italy and of Britain alone seem favoured. Though not of the true soprano, it was quite removed from the contralto quality, and would have been popularly classed as being of the former. Maurice was, however,

The English artist could not but be interested in her, and his interest could not but grow in proportion to the growth of their acquaintance. Otherwise, however, and independently of her voice, she had no attraction for him whatever, but rather the contrary. The lover of the beautiful, the graceful, and the amiable Grace Owen, about whom everything was always in perfect taste and in perfect keeping, was the last man who was likely to feel the least attraction towards the plain, ungraceful, and ungracious Italian, whom poverty and the hard circumstances in which she had spent her life had rendered, - not, indeed, illbred, -nature had taken care of that, but as far removed from the idea of a dame des salons as could well be. All the refining influences of life had always surrounded Grace Owen: very few, always excepting those of Art, had touched the imperfect life of Antonia Salvi. And as to eyes, Edward Maurice had spoken the exact truth when he said that none, however beautiful, could surpass the sweet, pure eyes of the fair girl in England who was to be his wife-eyes in which he had read a hundred times all the truth and love of a true and loving heart.

The interest, however, such as it was, that he took in the position and character of Antonia led him to repeat his visit to the apartment across the passage. The Italians were always glad to see him, as they had no friends, and scarcely any acquaintance; and a real liking sprang up among them. All, however, had their illusions about each other—that of Salvi himself being the idea that the charm of his own very mediocre performances on the violin was the attraction for the English painter; for, although vain to excess of his niece's talents, he was infinitely more vain of his own.

It was no very unusual thing, then, that one day in the following January Maurice tapped at Salvi's door, or that he heard the clear voice of Antonia cry "Come in!" or that he entered and found her alone. Her uncle was out, as usual, and her aunt was probably asleep in the next room. Antonia

Work is not enough to fill one's whole life - especially mine, with whom it is so much more a means than an end. With some men, I know, it is different. Tibald himself, for instance, never seems to have an idea in his head, or a feeling in his heart, that has not reference to his work. If he were the most hopelessly stupid and unsuccessful man in the world, instead of being the contrary, I believe he would still work on in his own way, though the result were starvation. I sometimes feel quite angry with him. He is deaf to music, and apparently the most prosaic man in the world- -never even talks about pictures except in the way that a carpenter talks about chairs and tables - all the energy and all the enthusiasm that he must have about him somewhere he bottles up and lets out from his finger-ends, never from his tongue or his eyes. He never needs rest or amusement. He seems an incarnation of Goethe's "Without haste -but without rest." Every hour of daylight he is at work-every hour that he is awake he is thinking, in company with his meerschaum. He never dreams, not even in sleep. He tells me that he only had a dream once in his life, and what do you suppose it was? Some vague striving after ideal beauty?—some great attempt to express an unattainable thought? Not the least. He dreamed that Titian told him that he had better keep clear of heaven, for they got white beer there, and not Bavarian. Then he works so provokingly slowly. But what results! You know those works of his, so honestly emulating those of the giants of old, so grand, so full of poetry, and yet almost so over-faultless. He seems, too, as a teacher, to read the nature of one's talent by intuition, and knows how to bring it out; and he has a genius for criticism, though it is always of the cold and judicial order- he never seems to hate or to love. Sheer power and strength, without beauty that is his character: he seems to put so much beauty into his work that he seems to have left none to spare for life.

"I confess I do not understand such a man. I say, let life be beautiful as a whole. Art is not everything. What say you at Rome?-Yours ever,

"E. MAURICE."

CHAPTER V.

HOWEVER much or little Maurice thought about Antonia, she certainly thought a great deal about him. He was the first person she had ever known who was capable of giving her anything like sympathy in her

vague aspirations who could share her feeling about Art as something more than a means of obtaining one's share of the good things of this earth. When but a child, her questions and her dreams, which she then used to pour forth with impulsive frankness, had been as little understood by those about her as if she talked the language of another world-as, in fact, she did. With the quickness of all children in such matters, she soon found this out, and drew into herself more and more, and became strange and solitary. The wandering life her family led had always prevented her forming more than the most passing acquaintance with other girls of her own age, and those with whom she did meet interested her but little; and so she passed the unhappy youth which such natures must inevitably undergo- unhappy even when surrounded by affectionate sympathy, but unspeakably miserable when, as is usually the case, it is misunderstood. When such natures have grown old enough to appreciate the world and themselves, the bitterness passes away. True genius accepts with a proud and silent resignation its solitary fate, and rejoices in shedding abroad its warmth and light without even wishing for the least return. But Antonia, as yet, understood neither herself nor the world. She still longed for sympathy, and to meet with some nature that might speak her own language and comprehend something of what filled her soul."

She was not an acute analyst of the characters of others- her experience was too confined, and her nature too introspective and self-contained. She always accepted others who showed her any kindness at an estimation higher even than that at which they valued themselves; and, as Maurice was, in many points, really her superior— in experience and cultivation, for instance

she was only too willing to lean on and confide in him. She was woman, after all.

Maurice, on the contrary, was, consciously and intentionally, an analyser of men and things. Though of a lighter and less intense character than Antonia, his imagination, his experience of men and women, and that almost feminine sensibility which is a common phenomenon of the artistic temperament, led him to comprehend Antonia's character very soon. He could not, perhaps, feel quite like her, but he could understand her feelings much better than she could understand them herself.

It gradually became more and more the habit of Antonia, as the familiarity of friendship increased, to ask Maurice for advice in her difficulties. One day-it was at the