inspires, continued her way, averting her head with calculation, but he
felt sure that she was not offended.

He could laugh at the mistake he had made for, at this close encounter,
he perceived that what in the tragic mood originated by the review of
beggars in the shades of night, he had taken to be a child's casket, was
a violin-case. The girl--she was perhaps but sixteen--had the artist's
eye, black, fiery, deep and winning, while haughty for the vulgar
worshiper; her hair was treated in a fantastic fashion as unlike that of
the staid German maiden as its hue of black was the opposite of the
traditional flaxen. Even in the feeble street-lamplight, she appeared,
with her finely chiseled features of an Oriental type, handsome enough
to melt an anchorite, and in the beholder a flood of passion gushed up
and expanded his heart--devoid of such a mastering emotion before. He
believed this was love! Perhaps it was love--real, true, indubitable
love--but there is a mock-love with so much to advance in its favor that
it has won many a battle where the genuine feeling has fought long in
vain.

Sharing some shock not unlike his own in extent and sharpness, the girl
with the violin-case had paused just perceptibly in an unconscious
attitude which kept in the lamplight her bust, tightly encased in a
faded but elegant Genoa brocade jacket, with copper lace ornamentation,
coming down upon a promising curve, clothed in a similarly theatrical
skirt of flowered satin and China silk braid. On her wrists were
bracelets and on her ungloved hands many rings, with stones rather too
large to be taken for genuine on a woman promenading alone at such an
hour. Conjoined with the musical instrument, the attire confirmed the
student in his first impression after the tragic one, that this was a
performer in one of the numerous dance-houses of the popular region,