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CHAPTER XVIII.

""Tis a very excellent piece of work-
Would 'twere done!"

Now was it fair weather in Venice; and on the day after Stephen Aylward's return the great windows of Andrew Fernlyn's studio stood wide open to the morning. The master's pupils were full of work, and the master's soul of content. He felt like a young man in that pleasant air and stood ruddy and brown in spite of wrinkles. Within the spacious room the American student was drawing with due solemnity the Chariot of the Soul as described by Plato-the noble horse docile and aspiring, and his dark yokefellow sensual and headstrong forced back on his haunches by the full weight and strength of the godlike charioteer. He was drawing deliberately and now and then making brief but trenchant cɔmments on the Platonic philosophy to which he had

been lately introduced.

He had bought a Greek

grammar and a book of early exercises, for having inherited from a line of successful dry-goodsmen a wholesome suspicion of adulteration he intended to study the Dialogues of Plato in the original.

The English boy was less absorbed than usual in contemplation of the cast from the antique, for the first breath of summer brought truant thoughts of cricket and English elms-truant thoughts which he dismissed with a smile as he turned to his chosen and delightful task, eager to please the master who had made his shiftless life so good. Two other occasional pupils were in close consultation over a large design. Only Stephen Aylward was idle and prepared to defend his idleness. To work he would have held a sorry waste of such a receptive morning—a morning of inspiration. So he lay in a long wicker chair outside the open window and breathed in the beauty of the little garden. seemed remarkably well and well content with life. "And so you have found something in my cousin after all?" he asked looking up and smiling on the vigorous old man, who stood contemptuous of his laziness.

He

"Something!" echoed Andrew Fernlyn. "It is only the richest nature that I have ever met. She

ought to be—she shall be-splendid as the pomegranate flower."

Stephen laughed low. "You too, Maestro?" he said; "well, the girl is pretty."

"Pretty!" muttered Mr Fernlyn with a contemptuous shrug of his big shoulders. "She is beautiful or will be."

"Oh for the enthusiasm of youth!" murmured Stephen and he stretched himself in the sun.

'Yes, she will be beautiful," continued Andrew as if he were talking to himself in the absence of a worthy auditor. "She will be beautiful when she is no longer starved. Already there is new light in her eyes, new vigour in her movements. She was always supremely graceful but with too indifferent a grace. Now the charm works. She needed life and I have given her Shakspere. He makes her move like an Elizabethan poem with happy strength; he makes her sing full-throated and smile more gaily; he" And here he broke off his speech as he became aware of his pupil's critical glance. He turned on him and addressed him defiantly. "It is natural, inevitable as summer. She had been starved, subdued. Subdued! That is one of her father's theories doubtless."

Stephen glanced up quickly being amazed at the

scorn which was concentrated in the word "theories." "I thought," he said in a tone of excessive respect, "that you also had some belief in theories."

"There are theories and theories," said Andrew shortly and then after a pause continued, "your uncle is all theory-all form and no substance-a refined profile in black paper. With him there is no room for anything from the abundance of rules of how everything ought to be made. No sir it is a different thing altogether; the cases have nothing in common; I am wholly different; and you are the same pert boy as ever. Will grow older?"

you never

I hope not," said Stephen with much civility; "I should like to stay where I am until you catch me up."

Messer Andrea laughed aloud and seated himself in his own straw chair. He seemed ready to continue the talk, though he again rebuked his pupil for his laziness. "" Why don't you go in and

draw?" he asked.

"For fear of upsetting one of your artistic theories," answered Stephen promptly, "as Philip will do if you don't look out."

"What has he been doing?" asked the master with interest.

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"Well," said Stephen, "last autumn he was full of your receipts for a great picture; he chose a subject beautiful in itself, not modern lest vulgar associations should mar the conception of perfect beauty, Greek because in the Greece of old beauty was in its perfect flower-you recognise the sort of phrases?"

'Well, well?" asked Mr Fernlyn impatiently.

"Well, he made a hash of it," answered the other.

"That's not my fault," said Mr Fernlyn.

"Certainly not," assented Mr Aylward meekly, "but wait a bit. After wasting a couple of months he bundled over his sketches in a great state of excitement, and pulled out one of some workmen at their daily work - modern, uncompromisingly modern."

"Well, well?"

"Well, do you know Maestro mio that if it were possible for any man nowadays to do a good thing in art I should say that Philip had done it."

Mr Aylward's voice was as studiously calm as ever, but there was a slight flush in his cheek as he made this bold assertion.

"As if there were any reason," cried Andrew Fernlyn impetuously, "why a modern should not