They say that men have fallen in love with that beautiful face of Bella Carew as modelled by Fairfax.
Arch and subtle, tender and provoking, distinguished, youthful, alluring, it is the most charming expression of young womanhood that an artist's hand could give to the world.
"Beloved," he murmured like a man half in sleep and half awakening, and he folded the lines of her bodice across her breast and fastened them there by a single rose.
With a sweep of her lovely hair, with an uplift of the corners of her beautiful lips, with the rose at her breast, Bella Carew will charm the artistic world so long as the clay endures.
CHAPTER III
On the promenade deck of one of the big steamers, as it pushed around into its pier, a man stood in his long overcoat, his hands in his pockets, hoping to avoid the reporters whom he had reason to suppose were ready to make him their prey.
He was entering New York Harbour at an early hour in the morning. It was November, and over the river and over the city hung the golden haze. If the lines of the objects, if the shore and buildings were crude, their impression was not so to him. To and fro the ferries plied from shore to shore, and their whistles and the whistles of the tugs spoke shrilly and loudly to the morning, but there was nothing nasal or blatant to him in the noises. He found the scene, the light of the morning, the greeting of the city as it stirred to life, enchanting. He had gone away from it six years ago, a broken-hearted man, and it seemed now as though he had made his history in an incredibly short time. Down in the hold of the boat, in their cases, reposed his sculptures, some thirty statues and models that he had brought for his exposition in New York. He had come back celebrated. His visions and his dreams so far had been fulfilled.