Real and Ideal Houses [pp. 442-445]

APPLETONS' JO URNAL.
know what has been the matter with me, Mr. Gainsborough," she said, with an attempt at reserve and
coldness in her tone. "I had hoped I might have
parted from you before you knew, but-it was not
to be so! It is very good of you to pretend to ignore it, and I thank you-I thank you. Here," she
added, nervously unclasping the necklace, and removing the car-rings, "I have worn these too long.
Take them, please."
"Kate, you shall wear them forever!" cried I,
passionately.
"I must not begin yet, at all events," she returned,
more firmly. "Take them, please, or you will make
me feel more humiliated than I do now." She put
them in my unwilling hands. "And now we'll get
our hats and go back to the hotel," she continued,
with a smile which was pathetic in its effort to seem
indifferent and unconstrained. "Where are they?
Ah!"
She had just caught sight of her white hat lying beside the stump on the farther side of the gorge.
The suppressed scream and the start indicated that
she now for the first time realized by what a perilous
path she had come hither. She remained for a moment gazing at the beam with a sort of fascination;
then, moving forward to the brink, looked down the
sheer precipice to the rocks below.
"I wish I had fallen!" she said, almost below
her breath; ",or," she added, after a short pause, in
a tone still lower, but of intense emphasis, "I wish
he had!"
"You wish I had?"
"I did not know you were so near," she an swered, drawing back from the verge. "No, no not you! Come, we must walk round this place.
Tell me," she said, facing me suddenly, "did you
see any one?"
"I think not. I fancied I heard-"
"We must get back to the hotel," she interrfipted,
excitedly; "at least, I must get back. I don't like
to be here. I wish you would leave me. I would
rather say'good-by' to you here than there."
"I never mean to say'good-by' to you at all,
Kate. If this is the trouble you hinted at, you overrate it entirely. Why, two people out of every seven
are somnambulists. It is as common as to have
black hair. Besides, you will outgrow it in a few
years; it is only a nervous affection, which any doctor can cure."
"It is not that; you don't understand," she said,
with a sigh.
"Whatever it is, I'm determined not to lose
you. I shall tell your father when 1 see him that I
love you, and that wherever he takes you I shall follow. No one can or shall keep us apart."
The resolution with which I spoke seemed to impress her somewhat. "You can speak to him if you
will. But, oh! it is no use. It cannot be- you
don't understand. Let me go; good-by. No, do
not come with me; please do not! I have a reason
for asking it. I will see you once more-to-morrow,
before we leave. But let me go alone now, if you
love me."
She went, walking quickly away through the
wood. I watched her for a few moments, and then
returned to the grass-plot beneath the tree, and threw
myself down there in a very dissatisfied frame of
mind. The sun had set before I returned to the
hotel.
[CONCLUSIoN NEXT MONTH.]
REAL AND IDEAL HOUSES.
PICTURED to myself, the other day, in a
half-dream, a house which embodied all the
latest and best ideas of taste and artistic culture."
"It must have been a dream, indeed.! But pray
what did your sleeping imagination set forth as the
ideal of a house?"
"It was a house like a symphony-all in harmony, and tone, and perfect keeping. Color was
the silent music of this house; form and porportion
were the foundations of its being. It was a house
in which there were beauty, repose, peace, and sweetness. The eye rested with lasting pleasure upon
fine adjustments of beautiful objects, and the mind
found intellectual stimulus in treasures of painting,
marble, and bronze."
"Yes, I see! Your dream was of a house toned
up, so to speak, to a high-art pitch-one of Whistler's'symphonies of color.' Well, this is not new
in the world of dreams. I am not sure but it would
be as well if houses of the kind existed only as a
fantastic nothing of the imagination. There was a
time when the ideal of a perfect house was one
which bloomed with thriving olive-branches-a nest
where under protecting wings life came into being,
expanded, filled all the spaces with love and music,
and which eventually sent out into the world hearty
and honest souls fit to cope with it and to adorn it.
But now the ideal house is that of a bric-a-brac shop.
Nevertheless, let me hear further."
"In the house I imagined there entered the matured and perfect knowledge of a trained tastethere were no incongruities, no vulgarities, no discords. It exhibited in its plan both a severe and a
liberal mind; it had harmony and unity with abundant variety. Just as we find in Nature rich contrasts, manifold details, and broad effects and masses, so the appointments and adornments of this
house were blended into a consistent and delightful
whole."
"This is all very well for generalization. But
my imagination cannot live on mere summaries. I
wait for some of the details in the furnishing of this
marvelous mansion."
"Our dreams are apt, you know, to grasp at a
442