The Pagans | Page 6

the vase."
"For myself it really does not so much matter."
"It is scarcely kind to your friends to say so."
"Oh,--my friends!"
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."
They were sitting upon one of the hard benches in the picture-gallery of the Art Museum before an important work just sent over from Europe by its American purchaser. The afternoon light was beginning to be a little dim, and Edith was troubled with the consciousness that the errands which had brought her for the day to Boston were far from being accomplished. It was pleasant to linger, however, especially as this might be the last tranquil day she should pass with Arthur before their marriage.
She rose from her seat and crossed to the picture of Millet representing a peasant girl with a distaff of flax in her hand. Fenton sat a moment looking after his betrothed, critically though fondly, then with a deliberate movement he left his seat and followed her.
"Think of the distance between this country and that picture," he remarked, regarding the beautiful canvas. "Art in America is simply an irreclaimable mendicant that stands on the street corners and holds out the catch-penny hand of a beggar."
"Oh, no," Miss Caldwell replied, turning her clear glance to his, "that is only an impostor that pretends to be art. The real goddess has her temples here."
"Yes," returned he, with a laugh that covered a sneer, "but not in the way you mean."
A shadow passed over her face; she turned a wistful glance towards him.
"I cannot understand, Arthur," she said, "why you speak so bitterly about art here. Of course, all great men are apt to be misunderstood at first, but you--"
"I am over estimated," he interrupted, inly vexed at having given the conversation this turn. "It is only for the sake of talking, ma petite. Don't mind it."
"But, Arthur," she persisted, "I want to say something. Uncle Peter talks as if you sided with the artists here who--who--"
She was wholly at a loss to phrase what she wished to say, both because her ideas