success. His personal attributes, inevitably tempered by the early Italian influence, marked him as one considerably above the commonplace. At college he had won the respect of his professors by his strength of mind and tenacity of application, and the affection of his fellow-students by his skill in athletics and his general good-fellowship. Now, eight years out of college, he had already made his place at the Boston bar, and was regarded as a successful man in his profession. But beyond all this, unknown even to himself, Armstrong was an extremist. The seed had been sown during that residence in Florence years before, when unconsciously he had assimilated the enthusiasm of an erudite librarian for the learning and achievements of the master spirits of the past. Latin and Greek at college had thus meant much more to him than dead languages; in them he found living personalities which inspired in him the liveliest ambition for emulation.

These were some of the subjects to which he introduced Helen. Little by little he told her of the fascination they possessed for him, of the treasures hidden beneath their austere exterior. But the girl was perhaps more interested by the charm of his presentation than by the possibilities she saw in the subjects themselves. She felt that she could understand him, and admitted her respect for the objects of his enthusiasm, but she was convinced that these were beyond her comprehension, and frankly rebelled at the necessity of going back into dead centuries for them.

“I love the present, and all that it contains,” she replied to him one day when something suggested the subject during one of the many walks they took together; “I love the sky, the air, the sunshine, and the flowers. Why should I go back to the past, made up of memories only, when I may enjoy all this beautiful world around me? And you, Jack—I should not have you if I had lived in the past!”

As her friends had said, she possessed strong ideas about marriage, and expressed them without reserve. Until Armstrong’s irresistible wooing, she had decided, as a result both of observation and of conclusion, that admiration and attention from many were far to be preferred to the devotion of any single one, and that matrimony was neither essential nor desirable except under ideal conditions.

“There are so many things which seem more interesting to me than a husband,” Helen asserted. “I’m afraid that I agree too much with that wise old cynic who said that ‘love is the wine of life, and marriage the dram-drinking.’ I insist on remaining a teetotaler.”

Thus Armstrong felt himself entitled to enjoy a certain degree of pride and satisfaction in that he had succeeded in convincing her at last that the ideal conditions she demanded had been met.

Even on board the steamer, at the start of their wedding journey, as the familiar sky-line of New York became less and less distinct, Armstrong read in his wife’s eyes, still gazing back at the vanishing city, the thoughts which inevitably forced themselves upon her—a last remnant of her former doubt. When she turned and saw him looking at her, she smiled guiltily.

“We are leaving the old life behind us,” she said. “With all the philosophy you have tried to teach me, I have not fully realized until now what a change it means.”

“Do you regret it?” he asked her, half rebellious that even a passing shadow should mar the completeness of their happiness.

Helen quickly became herself again, and threw back her head with a merry laugh at the seriousness of his interrogation. “Regret it! How foolish even to ask such a question! But you cannot wonder that the importance of the event should force itself upon me, now that we are actually married, even if it never did before. It makes so much more of a change in a woman’s life than in a man’s.”

Helen sighed, and then looked mischievously into his face. “With you superior beings,” she continued, “it simply signifies a new latch-key, a new head to your household, and the added companionship of a woman whom you have selected as absolutely essential to your happiness. You keep your old friends, give up for a time a few of your bad habits, and transfer a part of your affections from your clubs to your home. To the woman, it means a complete readjustment. New duties and responsibilities come to her all at once. From her earliest memory she has been taught to depend upon the counsel and guidance of her parents, but suddenly she finds herself freed from this long-accustomed habit, with a man standing beside her, only a few years her senior, who is convinced that he can serve in this capacity far better than any one else ever did. Even with a husband as superior as yourself, Mr. John Armstrong, is it not natural that one should recognize the passing of the old life, while welcoming the coming of the new?”

After landing, they had lingered for a fortnight in Paris, but, beneath the keen enjoyment of the attractions there, Armstrong had felt an impatience, unacknowledged even to himself, to reach Florence, which contained for him so much of interest, and whither his memory—let him give it sway—ever recalled him. He felt that his dei familiares were patiently waiting for him there, indulgent in spite of his long absence, yet insistent that their rights again be recognized. Having dropped his engrossing law-practice, he yearned to take advantage of this opportunity, now near at hand, to devote himself to the girl he had won, and at the same time to gratify this long-cherished wish to study more deeply into the work of those early humanists who had foreshadowed and brought about that mighty thought revolution, the wonderful breaking-away from the deadly pall of ignorance into the light and joyousness and richness of intellectual life known as the Renaissance. Helen would no longer fail to understand them when she saw them face to face. He would lead her gently, even as Cerini the librarian had led him; and together they would draw from the old life those principles which made it what it was, incorporating them into their new existence, which would thus be the richer and better worth the living. So now that he had actually reached his goal, it was natural that his contentment at finding himself in Florence with his wife was intensified by the joy of being again amid the scenes and personages which his imagination had taken out from the indefiniteness of antiquity, and invested with a living actuality.

The sharp contrast of his two great devotions came to John Armstrong as he stood at the cross-roads on the edge of San Domenico. The one had exerted so powerful an influence on what he was to-day—the other must influence his future to an extent even greater. The one, in spite of the personality with which he had clothed it, was as musty and antiquated as the ancient tomes he loved to study; the other, as she stood there, her cheeks aglow after the brisk walk, her face animated with enthusiastic delight, seemed the personification of present reality. What a force the two must make when once joined together, contributing, each to the other, those qualities which would else be lacking!

“I must take you yet a little higher,” Armstrong urged at length; “these walls still cut off much of the glorious view.”

In a few moments more they had partly ascended the Via della Fiesolana, which at this hour was wholly deserted. With a sigh, half from satisfaction and half from momentary fatigue, Helen turned to her companion. She caught the admiration which his face so clearly reflected, but, womanlike, preferred to feign ignorance of its origin. Glancing about her, she discovered a rock, half hidden by the tall grass and wild