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If there had been anything less than the happiness of a lifetime at stake, I think I should have felt that I owed Harold a sort of reparation for thinking him too great a man, and should still have offered him an affection none the less genuine for being transposed into a minor key. But it was hard for a girl who had dreamed blissfully of a grandly sentimental union, to find herself suddenly face to face with a sternly rational one. When, therefore, Harold mentioned a certain day as the latest for which he thought it proper
to wait, I found it impossible to assent, and asked for another months delay. What I wished to wait for I could hardly have told. Possibly for the first glow of illusion to return; possibly for the last uneasy throb which told that illusion was ebbing away. Harold received this request very gravely, and inquired whether I doubted of his affection.

“No,” I said, “I believe it’s greater than I deserve. ”

“Why then,” he asked, “should you wait?”

“Suppose I were to doubt of my own?”

He looked as if I had said something in very bad taste, and I was almost frightened at his sense of security. But he at last consented to the delay. Perhaps on reflection he was alarmed, for the grave politeness with which he discharged his attentions took a still more formal turn, as if to remind me at every hour of the day that his was not a sentiment to be trifled with. To trifle, Heaven knows, was far enough from my thoughts; for I was fast losing my spirits, and I woke up one morning with the conviction that I was decidedly not happy.

We were to be married in Paris, where Harold had determined to spend six months in order that he might try his fortune again in the studio of a painter whom he especially esteemed——a certain Monsieur Martinet, an old man, and belonging, I believe, to a rather antiquated school of art. During our first days in Paris I went with Harold a great deal to the Louvre, where he was a very profitable companion. He had the history of the schools at his fingers ends, and, as the phrase is, he knew what he liked. We had a fatal habit of not liking the same things; but I pretended to no critical insight, and desired nothing better than to agree with him. I listened devoutly to everything that could be said for Guido and Caravaggio. One day we were standing before the inscrutable “Joconde” of Leonardo, a picture disagreeable to most women. I had been expressing my great aversion to the lady’s countenance, which Harold on this occasion seemed to share. I was surprised therefore, when, after a pause, he said quietly, “I believe I’ll copy her. ”

I hardly knew why I should have smiled, but I did, apparently to his annoyance. “She must be very difficult,” I said. “Try something easier. ”

“I want something difficult,” he answered sternly.

“Truly?” I said. “You mean what you say?”

“Why not?”

“Why then copy a portrait when you can copy an original?”

“What original?”

“Your betrothed! Paint my portrait. I promise to be difficult enough. Indeed, I’m surprised you should never have proposed it. ” In fact the idea had just occurred to me; but I embraced it with a sort of relief. It seemed to me that it would somehow test my lover, and that if he succeeded, I might believe in him irremissibly. lie stared a moment as if he had hardly understood me, and I completed my thought. “Paint my portrait, and the day you finish it Ill fix our wedding day. ”