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think it so queer. And then it may never
come to anything-we are so poor. At least
it may be a long time first. Well, until our
way is a little more clear before us, I would
rather the engagement should be kept a secret.
You are not annoyed, are you, Ernst?"
"No," replied Ernst calmly, not understand-
ing too well, and not caring quite enough.
"Well," continued the shy and fastidious
Janet, "then it shall be so. We will be just
good friends in the eyes of Nellie until-until
it shall seem best to let her know

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On the morrow arrived Nellie Fisher, a plump, lively, laughing little blonde, with eyes of a deep turquoise blue, hair of the lightest and flossiest flaxen, a face somewhat broad and nose somewhat short, beautiful in the German peasant style, but undeniably beautiful. Ernst, who was present at the meeting of the two cousins, glanced at the visitor so frequently and with an expression so full of mysterious meaning, that Janet's interest was aroused. At the first chance for an aside she said to him, Well, what do you think of her?"

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"Do you think so?" replied Janet, half gratified and half anxious.

"I really like his accent now.
ridiculous at first."
"So did I."

I thought it

"What does she mean?" queried Nellie, marvelling at this dryness and brevity. "Oh, I suppose I know. He is poor, and I am poor, and we mustn't-flirt. Well-I suppose we— mustn't."

She went to the glass, looked at her lily skin, wished her nose were longer, arranged her flaxen hair, and wondered whether he liked her.

"Do you know how you could flatter me?" she said before long to Ernst.

"How?" he asked coolly, for she tempted him in a distressing manner, and he felt that he must allow himself no expansion.

"Oh! you don't want to do it," she replied, with a little sunny pout which she had, and which was irresistible.

"I am sure I wish to unable to bear her pout. you?"

blease you," he said, "How can I flatter

"You could put me into one of your pic

"She looks like the one in Chermany," he
replied, lost in meditation, his eyes both tender
and sombre, his soul in other years and lands.tures."
Janet turned pale.

Does the reader divine what she foresaw?
Well, it happened.

Ernst's heart was empty. Janet did not inhabit it; had not even entered into it. The unnamed girl whom he had loved in Prussia had by heroic efforts been so far expelled from it, that he did not desire ever again to see her. But her former residence there had so moulded the abode, that any one who resembled her could seize upon it, occupy it, and fill it. What now happened to the young man was apparently love at first sight, but was really no more than the transferring of an old love to a new object. A week after he first met Nellie Fisher the thought of her could fill him with delicious reveries, while the thought of his troth-plight to Janet Holcum was sufficient to make him meditate once more upon suicide. And the girl? He and she met every day, and two or three times a day. In spite of his conscientious efforts to control himself, there was in his manner toward her a tenderness, which, reinforced by his beauty, his graceful address, and the glamour of his artistic ability, could not but move the heart of a child of nineteen who had never hoped for so fine an admirer. In a little while Nellie began to flutter at sight of him, and to pet him in spite of her flutterings.

"Isn't he charming?" she said to her cousin.

"I should be charmed to do it," admitted the over-tempted artist.

The next day the two women beheld Nellie's bewitching face, drawn and coloured with all the fervour of an art which loves, smiling from Ernst's canvas. The younger blushed and bridled with joy to see herself there and so beautiful; the elder wore a fixed, mechanical smile, and said repeatedly, "What an excellent likeness!"

He had never put Janet's face into his creations. She did not blame him for that; she believed that he could do nothing agreeable with it; she surveyed herself in the glass and sighed, "I am so ugly!" But to see Nellie on that easel, painted by his hand, and painted so well, it was driving a dagger into her beating heart.

That very day Ernst, in a fit of noble remorse and self-sacrifice, said to Janet in private, "I wish you would let me inform Nellie of our troth-plight. I think it would pe petter."

She grew so faint under the terrible revelation which he had unintentionally made, that for a moment she could not answer him; and even when she spoke it was only to ask for delay. "Stop!" she said, pressing her hands upon her eyes. "Let me think. I must consider this."

66

He offered to slide his arm around her waist in his usual caressing style; but she gently

CHANET.

stopped him, looked earnestly in his face, amiled with an unspeakable piteousness, and gently glided away; her whole manner saying, "Ah, my darling! you don't wish to do it, and why do you do it?"

"Is it possible that she gomprehends me?" thought Ernst, folding his arms and shaking his head with the air of a man who is trying to stand firm against himself. He appreciated fully the self-abnegation and heroism of Janet's character; he knew that if he once confessed to her that he did not love her she would instantly free him from his engagement; and there was the image of Nellie pleading with him for his sake, if not for hers also, to make the confession. He shook his head and set his teeth until he had faced down the temptation, and had decided that, whether Janet permitted it or not, he would inform her cousin of the betrothal.

But during the day, while superintending her classes with her usual conscientious thoroughness, Miss Holeum also came to a decision. On reaching home in the afternoon she sent Nellie out on some distant errand, and then walked slowly up to Ernst's room.

“My tear Chanet! I am so glad to see you!" he said, coming towards her with extended hands and his sweetest smile. "My poor child, you look tired," he added, glancing pityingly at her unusually pale face. 'There, sit down, and take some rebose. Do you see my bicture? I have made some changes."

Raising her patient eyes to the canvas, Janet perceived that the portrait of Nellie had been so altered as to be no longer recognizable. Throbbing with admiration for this man, who could divine her heart so perfectly, and who could do what must have been hateful to him at the mere bidding of his sensitive conscience, she rose up with suddenly flushed cheeks, seized both his hands, printed one hot kiss on his smooth, white forehead, and then drew back, holding him at arm's-length, in order to worship him.

"Ernst, I know what you have done," she said, firmly. "I thank you for your noble intentions. But sacrifice for sacrifice. It is my turn now. Ernst, my own darling, we must separate. I was born for you, but you were not born for me. We must end this engagement. I must end it, or despise myself. I do end it. I break it. You are free. There."

She tore herself away from him and attempted to rush out of the room.

"Chanet! Chanet!" he called, springing after her and seizing her in his arms. "It

VOL. VIII.

118

must not pe so. You are the noplest woman on earth. I worship you. I cannot lose you.” "Oh! don't!" implored Janet, looking up at him in despair, for he was taxing her almost beyond her strength. After a moment, rallying all the power of her soul, she added, "See here, Ernst! let us speak the truth. Do you love me better than you love any one else?"

How could he have the seeming cruelty to answer her "No?" He did what most gentlehearted men would have done he told her a pitying, self-sacrificing falsehood. He said, "I do.'

She was too clear-sighted to be deceived, and too high-souled to accept an unwilling heart. "Look at this Bible, Ernst," she continued, drawing from her pocket a little Testament that never quitted her. "Put your hand upon it;" and here, seizing his fingers, she clasped them around the book. "Now tell me whether you love me better than any other." "You trife me into a gorner," replied the artist, piteously. Well, I swear. I swear that I resbect und atmire you more than any other human peing. Is it not enough?"

6.

"Do you love Nellie?"

"She is so like ," he stammered. "Well, she will soon be in love with you," said Janet, with a last supreme effort. "Take Make her happy."

her.

She had been leaning away from him. She now turned, with the revulsion of a billow, threw her arms around his neck, covered his face with kisses and tears, and then once more leaned back from him to look at him.

"That is the end of all between us," she said, in a hoarse, deep voice, totally unlike her usual utterance. "Henceforward I shall do my duty, and you must help me do it. One thing-never tell Nellie of this; it would darken her happiness. And now-good-bye." She dragged herself away from him, ran downstairs, and locked herself in her room.

"Mein Gott!" murmured Ernst, left to himself. "I shall lose a heart worth den tousand of mine. But it is petter. She is wiser. I could not lofe her. I should end by making her unhabby as now-und more so. She is wise for us poth."

The next day, to the astonishment and annoyance of Nellie Fisher, but by the positive dictation of Janet Holeum, the two women removed from their lodgings to a cheap boarding-house. There was, however, one good thing about the change: the boarding-house had a parlour where Mr. Hartmann could be received with a sense of spotless propriety; and what was delightful, he always had to be re177

114

PAN'S SONG OF SYRINX,

ceived by Miss Fisher, the elder cousin excus- | despair that was uttered by this martyr, at ing herself on pretence of business, illness, &c. | least in human ears. One can easily see that all this had to end in a second troth-plight, and that the parties to it could not be other than Ernst and Nellie. It was "petter;" youth must have youth; love must have love. In these bargains mere espect and gratitude are not a fair exchange for the unreasoning, instinctive, potent impulse of the heart.

Almost the first use that Nellie made of her betrothal was to run down to Ernst's studio, entirely, as she declared, to look at the new picture, but mainly, no doubt, to look at the artist. She too, like Janet before her, observed a change in the personages of the little drama. She had never known that her like ness had been obliterated, and she did not discover it now, for it had been restored in all its beauty. But in the face of one of the principal female figures-a face which, though not absolutely handsome, was sublime with an expression of noble and tender resignationin this face, which looked up to heaven as if it had descended from thither, Nellie recognized the countenance of Janet Holcum.

66

"

"Why! you have got in Cousin Jennie too," exclaimed the delighted girl. 'Oh, you creature! you have made her finer than me.' "I wanted to tignify the bainting," said Ernst simply, "with the bortrait of the pest woman in the world."

"Isn't she!" replied Nellie, pressing her face gratefully against his shoulder. "I am so glad you do her justice. I owe everything to her. Oh! I wouldn't cause her a grief for the world."

The picture having been sold to Moineau for the large sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars, it was decided that Ernst's prospects of success were good enough to justify marriage, and Janet ruled that Nellie must go home for that purpose to the residence of an old aunt in Connecticut.

The girl having departed, Janet felt able to have one interview with Hartmann, not with the object of indulging in any weak reproaches or bemoanings, but to bid him a last farewell. She was going to Ceylon, she informed him, as English teacher in one of the schools of the "American Board of Foreign Missions."

"Oh! it is too far!" implored the young man. "If you must go away, let it pe still in this gountry. There is the Freedmen's Bureau schools in the South."

"People return from the South," she replied. "I must go whence I shall never return."

It was the only complaint, the only cry of

|

When Stanley heard of Miss Holeum's proposed departure, he said to Ernst, in surprise, "I thought she was to be your missionary. What! have you taken the mitten! Oh, you clever dog! You know the difference between an old maid and a new one."

"See here," said the German, with solemnity. "I do not want you, one of my pest vriends, to desbise me; und I want you to resbect Miss Holcum as she ought to be resbected. I will dell you everything, und you must dell no one."

Before he had half finished his story of the broken engagement, Stanley rose from his seat, dropped his cigar, and walked up and down the room, rubbing his eyes with his hands, just like an affected boy.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, when the narrator had ceased. "If she wasn't in love with you, I'd be tempted to marry her myself. She's not a chicken, and she's not a beauty, but she's pure gold."

"She's a berfect lady und a grand gentleman in one," said Ernst.

The urgencies of the Board sent Janet off to Ceylon before the marriage. Hartmann and Stanley accompanied her as far as the Narrows, and then, from the deck of the tug, watched her as she leaned over the taffrail, waving farewell to friends and native land.

As the lonely figure of this loving, selfsacrificing, heroic, sublime martyr faded from their sight, the American said, "God bless her!" And the German added, with his eyes full of tears, "Sancta Chanet, ora pro nobis!”

PAN'S SONG OF SYRINX.

Pan's Syrinx was a girl indeed,
Though now she's turned into a reed;
From that dear reed Pan's pipe does come,
A pipe that strikes Apollo dumb;
Nor flute, nor lute, nor gittern can
So chant it as the pipe of Pan:
Cross-gartered swains and dairy girls,
With faces smug and round as pearls,
When Pan's shrill pipe begins to play,
With dancing wear out night and day;
The bagpipe's drone his hum lays by,
When Pan sounds up his minstrelsy;
His minstrelsy, O base! This quill,
Which at my mouth with wind I fill,
Puts me in mind, though her I miss,
That still my Syrinx' lips I kiss.

JOHN LYLY.

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