shall I put the mother bird?" whispers Margaret.
"On de eggs," answers General Jackson, in the same low voice.
"But that will hide the eggs," objects Margaret.
"Margaret, what are you whispering to that child about? Can't you send him away?"
"Yes, papa. Be still, General, can't you?" very severely.
"'He found the Holy Father much inclined to coincide with his views, and the difficulties would have been easily smoothed over had it not been for the mischievous intriguing of a certain cardinal—'"
"See, General, there 's the father bird."
"He must have a worm," insisted the child.
"I see there is no use in trying to interest you in Michael Angelo to-day, Margaret. You seem to find that black child vastly more important."
"He is n't quite so remote, papa, and to-day I am rather in a mood for the present; and General Jackson means the present, don't you, General?"
"Yes, missy."
Stuart Ruysdale put the book down, and with a half-impatient sigh came and stood beside the two culprits. General Jackson looked rather shy, and beat a hasty retreat under Margaret's chair. The young sculptor added the worm to the small bill of the father bird, and placed him in an appropriate attitude by the edge of the nest. Then she laughed.
"Why, you little stupid thing, the birds are not out of the shells yet. What does the father bird bring the worm for?"
"For de mudder," answered the child promptly, with a shrewd glance at General Ruysdale's sober face.
"Is n't he bright, papa?"
"I suppose so, my child; but have you been modelling playthings all day, when your Atalanta is in such a condition?"
Margaret rose, and standing on tiptoe, kissed her father's careworn forehead, mutely asking forgiveness for a neglected duty.
Both the generals soon left her; and when Philip Rondelet, now a frequent visitor at the house, came into the studio half an hour later, he found Margaret standing at the window with her bird's nest in her hand, looking out into the deepening afternoon sky. He stood watching her a few minutes before he spoke.
"Mademoiselle, what troubles you? You are sad this afternoon."
"Ah! is it you? I am so glad you have come. I am full of unrest to-day, and it always does me good to see you in these moods," said Margaret, giving him her hand, and forgetting the trace of clay still clinging to it. "Forgive my working woman's hands," she added, with a blush.
"I have always noticed," answered Rondelet, still holding the small firm fingers in his grasp and examining them curiously, "that women who use their hands have a curious false shame at any trace of their work being detected. Coming upon you at your modelling, how could I expect to find your hands like Mrs. Darius Harden's jewelled fingers, white and cared for, lying idly in your lap?"
"Yours are so white, I almost doubt if they ever work."
Rondelet laughed rather uneasily, and changed the conversation.
"You have not answered my question. Why are you troubled and restless to-day?"
"I do not know; I feel a sort of tumult in my blood—almost a rebellion against existence. And yet I am well and happy, if it is happiness to be without a grief or a care."
"You live too much among your marbles; they chill you."
"But I am feverish, not chilled. I want to be young. My youth is slipping from me, and yet my life is as old and cold as if I carried half a century of years on my shoulders. Is it my fate or my nature which compels me to put all my life and love into this wet clay, which absorbs more and more of me each day, and puts me farther and farther from my kind? I want youth and sunlight and foolish gayety. Take me somewhere where there is something young!"
She spoke passionately, and threw down her little modelling tool with a gesture of aversion. Rondelet, who had learned to know Margaret Ruysdale very well, had never seen her in such a humour as this; and for the first time since he had met her he found it impossible to understand her, facile as he was in taking the impress of her thoughts and feelings. He looked at her, doubtful, embarrassed, not knowing what to say next; and in that moment of hesitation a shadow fell between them—a third person had entered the studio. Margaret was looking appealingly into Philip's face. He had helped her so often with his quick sympathy, could he not devise something to soothe this new mood, incomprehensible to herself as it was to him? His delicate fair face flushed painfully beneath her gaze, but he had nothing to say.
The man who had just come in greeted Rondelet and Margaret with a silent bow, and then stood leaning against the door-post, looking at the sculptor with inquiring eyes. Margaret answered the unspoken question with a shake of her head.
"No, I do not need your services as a model to-day, Mr. Feuardent; it is too late to begin to work. Besides, I am very tired of work; if you could take a new rôle, now, and help me to play a little."
"To play?—why, willingly; that is the easiest thing in the world for me. Take off your apron and come; we will go to the fête at the fairgrounds and amuse ourselves with the people. Come, it is a glorious afternoon."
Margaret hastily unfastened and laid aside the long straight blue apron which hid all the pretty curves of her small elastic figure.
"Will they be young and happy and alive?" she asked.
"We will make them so," answered Feuardent, with a ringing laugh. "If you and I cannot stir them up to-day, they must be cold people indeed."
Margaret answered with a full peal of merriment, and danced away to the house, pausing a moment to toss General Jackson in her strong arms.
The two men left together in the studio presented a striking contrast of types. Rondelet, who was well over middle height, looked almost short beside Robert Feuardent, whose great size raised him above the heads of other men. So perfect were his proportions that he always had the effect of dwarfing other people rather than of towering above them. He was a younger man than his companion, and could not have seen more than twenty-five years. His head, which he habitually held rather high, was small and of a Greek mould, and was finely set upon the broad shoulders by a round smooth throat, beautiful as a woman's. His complexion was of the color of a late autumn peach which has hung long upon the tree and acquired a bronze tinge, through which the red shows with a splendid warmth of color. Thick eyebrows, which looked as if they might frown ominously, arched a pair of eyes fearless, open, and with a certain savage beauty, like those of some untamed creature of the woods. His thick dark-brown hair was without curl, but looked full of life and electricity, as did the small mustache which hid the upper lip. When he laughed and showed his small, even, white teeth, the impression of a wild, untamed being was deepened; it was such a hearty, unconventional laugh, they were such firm, dangerous-looking white teeth. Margaret Ruysdale had told him once that his civilization was only a sham; that he only masqueraded in broadcloth, and that his proper dress would be a suit of skins.
To the young artist, accustomed to intercourse with people of her own profession and way of thought, this simple natural man, with few broad traits of character and strong instincts and prejudices, was a constant wonder and amusement. She had understood him instinctively, as Joachim might understand the simple instrument of the Egyptian Fellaheen, two strings stretched over a gourd. But to the peasant musician, the Stradivarius of the master would be a thing of mystery and awe.
So Margaret Ruysdale was to Robert Feuardent a perfect enigma. Her delicate, complex nature, fine and strong, impressed him very much. He could not fail to admire her, but neither could he understand her.
Day after day he had sat by and listened while Margaret worked on her bas-relief and conversed with his friend Philip Rondelet of things as foreign to Robert Feuardent as art is foreign to nature.
It was his turn to-day. Rondelet was left outside, wondering and not understanding, and he, Feuardent,