The Truth About Tristrem Varick

as crystallization. When a man becomes interested in a woman, when he pictures her not as she really is, but as she seems to him-as s

has received the baptism of fire, its effect is that of a tonic. To the one it is a fever, to the other a bugle-call. In the first instance, admiration is pursued by self-depreciation, desire is pinioned before conventional obstacles, an

ath, waiting only to be gathered, but, in that case, certain it is that he had passed them by unheeded. To use the figurative phrase, he was incapable of stretching his hand to any woman who had not the power of awakening a lasting affection; and during his wanderings, and despite, too, the example and easy morals of his comrades, no such woman having crossed his hor

A lexicographer, deservedly forgotten, has defined it as an exchange of fancies, the contact of two epiderms. Another, wiser if less epigrammatic, announced it as a something

nown as second sight. Or, it may come of the gradual fusion of two natures. It may come of propinquity, of curiosity, of sympathy, of hatred. It may come of the tremors of adolescence, the mutual attraction of one sex for the other; and, again, it may come of natural selection, of the

rst he fancied that it might be Stella; but that, for some occult reason which only a lover would understand, he abandoned for Thyra, a name which pleasured him awhile and which he repeated aloud until it became sonorous as were it set in titles. But presently some defect presented itself, it sounded less apt, more suited to a blue-eyed daughter of a viking than to one so brune as she. Decidedly, Thyra did not suit her. And yet her name m

that announced her as the perfume announces the rose, a name that pictured and painted her, a name that suited her as did her gown of

he threw the waving i

d, "and when I see her I will

ent, occur to him. He was loitering in the enchanted gardens of the imagination,

er; he had a natural understanding of music, its value was clear to him, yet its composition was barred. The one talent that he possessed-a talent that grows rarer with the days-was that of appreciation, he could admire the masterpieces of others, but creation was not his. A few centuries ago he would have ma

lity to be Somebody was not a matter of which the District Attorney is obliged to take cognizance. At least he need do no harm, and he would have wealth enough to do much good. It was in thoughts like these that hitherto he had found consolation. But on this particular morning he looked for them anew, and the search was fruitles

laimed the dome as his. But he! What had he to offer? His name, however historical and respected, was an accident of birth. Of the wealth which he would one day possess he had not earned a groat. And, were it lost, the quadrature of the circle would not be more difficult than its restoration. And yet, and yet-though any man she could meet might be better and wiser and stronger than he, not

uttered, and then proceeded to dress. He took a tub and got himself, absent-mindedly, into a morning suit. "

the simpleton there awakes a Machiavelli. Tristrem passed a forenoon in trying to unravel as cruel a problem as has ever been given a lover to solve-how, in a city like New York, to meet a girl of whom he knew absolutely nothing, and who was probably unaware of his own existenc

married woman, such persistence should be discouraged. But the opportunity for such discouragement did not present itself, or rather, when it did the need of discouragement had passed. Tristrem drank tea with her several times,

inking was continued with sufficient endurance, not only would he acquire, from a talkative lady like his hostess, information of the amplest kind, which after all was secondar

n unestopped; but let her leave a dinner-call overdue and unpaid, then is she shameless indeed. In this code Tristrem was necessarily learned. On returning to Fifth Avenue he had marvelled somewhat at noting that laws which applied to one sex

f which amounted to this: Miss Raritan lived with her mother in the shady part of the Thirties, near Madison Avenue. Her father was dead. It had been rumored, but with what truth Mrs. Weldon was not prepared to affirm, that the girl had some intention of appearing on the lyric stage, which, if she carried out, would of course be the end of her socially. She had been very much ruin after on account of her voice, and at the Wainwarings the Pres

ord him food for reflection. During the gleaning many people had come and gone, but of Miss Raritan he had as yet seen nothing. The next afternoon, however,

peech which he had rehearsed, but for the moment he was dumb. He plucked absently at his cuff, to the palms of his hands there came a sudden moisture. In the vestibule abov

eps before Tristrem was a

I heard you sing the other night. I have come here every day since in the hope of--;

ugh, I thought you seemed rather bored." She made this answer very

ld have mollified a tigress. "I was not bo

ldon, tells me that you

xactly wha

oked at him, musingly. "I wi

ties overcome, ever appreciates a masterpiece. A sonnet, if perfect, is only perfect to a sonneteer. The gallery m

d with Italy and dirt in its face followed them, her hand outstretched. Tristrem had an a

o appreciates rags,

envying the simplicity which they sometimes conceal. That woman, now, s

ice you liked," Miss Ra

d his mind which he chased indignantly. There was about

r over the other night." He hesitated, as though waiting for some question, but she did not so much as look at him, and he continued unas

did care for m

decide

her head with a movement

ell you," he added-

ring Fifth Avenue. There the stream of

began again, "I hop

other man I meet-There, we can cross now. Besides, I a

e not m

to the door of a milliner, a portal which Tristrem knew was closed to him. "If you care to come and see me," she adde

ated repartee which Thackeray called cab-wit, the brilliancy which comes to us wh