A great convulsive sob rising from the girl's heart was the only answer he re

ceived. He bent down his head till his hair brushed her cheek, to which the blood had leaped flame-like; his lips met hers in a wild, fervid kiss that had in it all the force and flavour of his passion.

66

Capri, Capri, have some heart! Did you but love me as I love you, you would think all heaven and earth too small a sacrifice for my love."

The words broke from him with a cry almost of despair. All the sorrow of his soul was in the sound.

She did not speak. Still clasped in his arms, she laid her head on his shoulder and silently cried.

"It is not yet too late," he went on. "Give all your ambitions up, and I shall love you, worship you as woman never was loved or worshipped before."

He felt her whole frame quiver; her hands clung to him tenderly, lovingly, as if loth to take themselves from his touch. Then suddenly, and in an instant, she disengaged herself from his clasp, and stood before him.

"Good-bye, Marc," she said, between her sobs, which she strove in vain to suppress.

He stood motionless as a statue now. None could tell, from the exterior calmness which quickly came upon him, of the great passion that swayed his soul, and made him almost mad from the effort of

suppression. His face was deadly pale, his eyes were fixed, his lips white and set. He did not answer her last words. She turned towards the door, hesitated, looked back once, and ran to where he stood, acting on a sudden impulse.

"Good-bye, dear Marc," she said once

more, and reaching up her face she kissed

him on the lips.

In another second she had left the room, and Marcus Phillips was alone.

38

CHAPTER II.

LEFT ALONE.

HE door closed behind Capri with that

THE

hollow sound, it seemed to the artist, with which the dull earth falls upon the coffin of one we have loved. He listened to her footfall going down the stairs, and the full sense of all he had lost for ever, the true knowledge of his sorrow came upon him.

With a cry breaking from his lips, he flung himself face downwards upon the couch where the girl had so often sat in by-gone, happy days, and lay there as the

evening wore on, and the coming night chased the last sunrays from the sky.

He was stunned by the blow which his fondest hopes, his brightest prospects of happiness, his tenderest affections had so suddenly received. He lay quite still and silent, with the sense of a great sorrow, which at present he felt that he but half comprehended, weighing him down. He only knew that all the world was lost to him, that suddenly all his life was rendered dark and terribly drear, that his whole future was shrouded in dense blackness upon which not the slightest ray of hope or comfort beamed.

When early in life a great sorrow falls upon us, we believe that never again can we know happiness or peace; that no spring will come for us and melt the wintry wilderness of our hearts, that no coming suns can make the flowers of dead