to me as you would talk to a friend? You only esteemed and admired--
there is an end of it."

"No, there is not an end of it," cried Graham, giving way to an
impetuosity of passion, which rarely, indeed, before another, escaped his
self-control; "the end of it to me is a life out of which is ever
stricken such love as I could feel for woman. To me true love can only
come once. It came with my first look on that fatal face--it has never
left me in thought by day, in dreams by night. The end of it to me is
farewell to all such happiness as the one love of a life can promise--
but--"

"But what?" asked Mrs. Morley, softly, and very much moved by the
passionate earnestness of Graham's voice and words.

"But," he continued with a forced smile, "we Englishmen are trained to
the resistance of absolute authority; we cannot submit all the elements
that make up our being to the sway of a single despot. Love is the
painter of existence, it should not be its sculptor."

"I do not understand the metaphor."

"Love colours our life, it should not chisel its form."

"My dear Mr. Vane, that is very cleverly said, but the human heart is too
large and too restless to be quietly packed up in an aphorism. Do you
mean to tell me that if you found you had destroyed Isaura Cicogna's
happiness as well as resigned your own, that thought would not somewhat
deform the very shape you would give to your life? Is it colour alone
that your life would lose?"