142 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
wine, the sweet incense of admiration, the soft, cozy, health- ful charms of Dolly, been sensuous, as opposed to the spirituelle temptations which should guide the choice of a lover who looked for a wife superior to the wiles of Society and to the frivolous attractions of dress ?
These questions, not exactly in definite shape, but shadowy, passed before him, without answers. They seemed to have the accompaniment of some strains of music from Carmen, and his thoughts wandered away to the Opera, 'and to the beautiful, sad face in the curtains of Lady Marchmount's box.
He listened, and could hear faintly the strains of a street band, which was playing a passage from the very scene which had for him been interrupted by that strangely fascinating presence which he had endeavored to suggest in his medal picture.
His eyes wandered to the easel, and as they did so the remnant of grey silk which had covered his sketch gradu- ally slipped down upon the floor, and there was the face looking at him through its deep red halo, and its accom- panying figures of misery and suffering. There was nothing supernatural in this, though it exercised an uncanny kind of influence upon Philip. The truth is, the drapery had been gradually slipping away for hours, influenced by the increasing gravitatiqn of the heaviest part to the floor and the entrance of Philip, the shutting of the door, and his moving about, so that it fell away just at a critical moment in Philip's reflections, and his imaginative nature found in the incident a shadow of a protest against the chief event of the previous night.
If Dolly's face only gave you the idea that there was something behind it, he went on mentally saying to himself, an intellectuality beyond mere worldliness, how much more beautiful it would be ! But he could lead her in the direction of the studies he liked ; he could give her an
