Daily Kennebec journal., 1895-08-08

ner thither. She continually evaded
or eluded the final words which would
have united them or parted them.
Have you given up your appoint
ment?" he asked once, directly.
Damer merely answered.: mo" He
did not offer any explanation; but he
continued to stay on in Venice, though
he had removed from the fine apart
ments occupied by his friend to a house
on the Fondamente Nuovi, where he
had hired two chambers.
Andrcis, who was very generous and
had always a grateful and uneasy sense
of unrepaid obligation, vainly urged
him to remain at his hotel. But Damer,
somewhat rudely, refused.
81 cannot pursue any studies there"
he replied.
The house he had chosen was obscure
and uninviting, standing amidst the
clang of coppersmiths' hammers and
the stencil of iron foundries in what
was once the most patrician and beau
tiful garden-quarter of Venice, and
which is now befouled, blacllened,
filed with smoke, and Glamour, and
vileness, where once the rose terraces
and the clematis-covercd pergole ran
down to the lagoon and the marble
stairs were white as snow under silken
awnings.
"What do you do there?" Veronica
wished to ask him; but she never did
so; she felt vaguely afraid as woman
of the middle age would have feared to
ask a magician what he did with his
alembics and his spheres.
Although the eyes of lovers are
proverbially washed by the collyrium
of jealousy, those of Andreis were
blind to the passion which Damer, like
himself, had conceived. The reserve
and power of self-restraint in Damcr
were extreme, and served to screen his
secret from the not very discerning
mind of his companion. Moreover, the
pride of race which was born and bred
in Andreis rendered it impossible for
him to suspect that he possessed
rival in one who was, however mental
ly superior, so far socially inferior, to
himself and to the woman he loved
That a man who was going to receive
a stipend as a teacher in German uni
versity could lift his eyes to Veronica
Laranigra would have seemed wholly
impossible to one who had been reared
in patrician and conservative tenets.
He never noticed the fires which slum-
bered in the cold, wide-open eyes of his
friend and monitor. He never observed
how frequently Damer watched him
and her when they We're together, list
ened from afar to their conversation,
and invariably interrupted them at any
moment when their words verged on
more tender or familiar themes. He
was himself tenderly, passionately, ro-
mantically enamoured; his temper was
full of a romance to which he could not
often give adequate expression; his
love for her had the timidity of all sin
cere nascent passion; he was panied
and chafed by the manner in which she
avoided the definite declaration of it,
but he did not for moment trace it to
its right cause.-The magnetic influence
which Damer had upon her, the hesita-
ton which was given her by vague
hypnotic suggestion. If any looker-on
had warned him he would have laughed
and said that days of magic were past.
Damer read the young mans heart
like an open book and he knew that it
was wholly filed with the image of
Veronica BE haS;,aver liked Andreis:
ne had no liking for youth or for
physical beauty, or for kindliness and
sweetness and simplicity Of character. /