She had forgotten her sweet, half sad shyness, and sat with faint flush on her face, her lips parted, her blue eyes fixed on his.

“A heroine of my own creation,” he went on; “and I gave her an ideal face—­lilies and roses blended, rose-leaf lips, a white brow, eyes the color of hyacinths, and hair of pale gold.”

“That is a pretty picture,” she said, all unconscious that it was her own portrait he had sketched.

His eyes softened and gleamed at the naivete of the words.

“I am glad you think so.  Then my heroine had, in my fancy, a mind and soul that suited her face—­pure, original, half sad, wholly sweet, full of poetry.”

She smiled as though charmed with the picture.

“Then I grew to be a youth, and then to be a man,” he continued.  “I looked everywhere for my ideal among all the fair women I knew.  I looked in courts and palaces, I looked in country houses, but I could not find her.  I looked at home and abroad, I looked at all times and all seasons, but I could not find her.”

He saw a shadow come over the sweet, pure face as though she felt sorry for him.

“So time passed, and I began to think that I should never find my ideal, that I must give her up, when one day, quite unexpectedly, I saw her.”

There was a gleam of sympathy in the blue eyes.

“I found her at last,” he continued.  “It was one bright June morning; she was sitting out among the roses, ten thousand times fairer and sweeter than they.”

She looked at him with a startled glance; not the faintest idea had occurred to her that he was speaking of her.

“Do you understand me?” he asked.

“I—­I am frightened, Lord Arleigh.”

“Nay, why should you fear?  What is there to fear?  It is true.  The moment I saw you sitting here I knew that you were my ideal, found at last.”

“But,” she said, with the simple wonder of a child.  “I am not like the portrait you sketched.”

“You are unlike it only because you are a hundred times fairer,” he replied; “that is why I inquired about you—­why I asked so many questions.  It was because you were to me a dream realized.  So it came about that I heard your true history.  Now will you be my friend?”

“If you still wish it, Lord Arleigh, yes; but, if you repent of having asked me, and should ever feel ashamed of our friendship, remember that I shall not reproach you for giving me up.”

“Giving you up?” cried Lord Arleigh.  “Ah, Madaline—­let me call you Madaline, the name is so sweet—­I shall never give you up!  When a man has been for many years looking for some one to fill his highest and brightest dreams, he knows how to appreciate that some one when found.”

“It seems all so strange,” she said, musingly.

“Nay, why strange?  You have read that sweetest and saddest of all love stories—­’Romeo and Juliet?’ Did Juliet think it strange that, so soon after seeing her, Romeo should be willing to give his life for her?”