"You do not want me to wish that I had not come to you uncle?"

"Heaven forbid!" he said, simply.

"Then you must not alter anything in your life; you must go on as if I had never dropped from the clouds to be a burden upon you."

"My child!" he murmured, reproachfully.

"Or to make you uncomfortable. I could not bear that, uncle."

"No, no!" he said, "I will alter nothing, Stella; we will be happy, you and I."

"Very happy," she murmured, softly.

He wandered to the window, and stood looking out; and, unseen by him, she drew a chair up and cleared it of the litter, and unconsciously he sat down.

Then she glided to and fro, wandering round the room noiselessly, looking at the curious lumber, and instinctively picking up the books and putting them in something like order on the almost empty shelves.

Every now and then she took up one of the pictures which stood with their faces to the wall, and her gaze would wander from it to the painter sitting in the moonlight, his white hair falling on his shoulders, his thin, nervous hands clasped on his knee.

She, who had spent her life in the most artistic city of the world, knew that he was a great painter, and, child-woman as she was, wondered why the world permitted him to remain unknown and unnoticed. She had yet to learn that he cared as little for fame as he did for wealth, and to be allowed to live for[9] his art and dream in peace was all he asked from the world in which he lived but in which he took no part. Presently she came back to the window, and stood beside him; he started slightly and put out his hand, and she put her thin white one into it. The moon rose higher in the heavens, and the old man raised his other hand and pointed to it in silence.

[9]

As he did so, Stella saw glide into the scene—as it was touched by the moonbeams—a large white building rearing above the trees on the hill-top, and she uttered an exclamation of surprise.

"What house is that, uncle? I had no idea one was there until this moment!"

"That 

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