"You need not go on that account," said Leicester, "I am not certain of going to sleep at all before morning!"
"And I," said Robert, with a faint smile, "somehow this conversation makes me restless. That sweet dream from which you aroused me, will not be likely to come back again to-night!"
Robert glanced at the miniature as he spoke, and a glow of admiration kindled the mist still hanging about his eyes.
"Perhaps," said Leicester, quietly, and with his keen glance fixed upon the boy, "perhaps I may introduce you to her some day."
"To her," cried the youth. "Alive! is there any being like that alive?"
His face was in a glow, and a bright smile flashed over it. Nothing could have been more beautiful than the boy that moment.
Leicester regarded him with a faint smile. Like a chemist, he was experimenting upon the beautiful nature before him, and like a chemist he watched the slow, subtle poison that he had administered.
"Alive and breathing, Robert; the picture does not quite equal her in some things. It is a little too sad. The quick sparkle of her more joyous look no artist can embody. But you shall see her."
"I shall see her," muttered Robert, turning his eyes from the miniature. "What if my dream were to prove correct?"
"What—the lone island, the flowers, the magical fruit!" said Leicester with a soft laugh that had a mocking tone in it.