CHAPTER VI.
COUSIN CLARA.
That man who spends his days in painting a girl's portrait, in talking to her, and in gazing upon the unfinished portrait when she is not with him, and occupies his thoughts during the watches of the night in thinking about her, is perilously near to taking the last and fatal step.

Flight for such a man is the only thing left, and he so seldom thinks of flight until it is too late.
Arnold was at this point.
"I am possessed by this girl," he might have said had he put his thoughts into words.

"I am haunted by her eyes; her voice lingers on my ears; I dream of her face, the touch of her fingers is like the touch of an electric battery." What symptoms are these, so common that one is almost ashamed to write them down, but the infallible symptoms of love?
And yet he hesitated, not because he doubted himself any longer, but because he was not independent, and such an engagement might deprive him at one stroke of all that he possessed.

Might?
It certainly would.

Yes, the new and beautiful studio, all the things in it, all his prospects for the future, would have to be given up.