paint an innumerable number of pictures for his new gallery?"

"Not quite so many," said Karl; "but enough to keep me busy these last four years. Now I feel as if I needed a holiday and some change of scene, and so I have come straight to this bewitching Paris of yours. But I hear wonderful things of you as a portrait painter. Your portraits are said to be the most marvellous combination of poetry and matter-of-fact-of the real and ideal ever beheld. Every pretty girl who wishes to be exalted into an angel, every good-looking youth who aspires to be represented as a hero, every ugly man or woman who imagines that he or she possesses spiritual or intellectual beauties which the dull matter in which Dame Nature works has distorted, comes to you, I am told, and finds every defect elevated into a beauty on canvas. Wonderful to tell, you appear to give satisfaction to all, and, if I may judge from appearances, report has not exaggerated the large income you are making. This splendid apartment is somewhat different from the bare, old studio at Rome."

"If you mean by the ideal, a belief in a higher truth, a nobler perfection in art and in life than the common standard, I agree with you that faithfulness to it is not likely to give riches and reputation, but in the old days, Maurice, that conviction would not have had much effect on you."

"No, I was an enthusiast then. You, I suppose, are so still; but you are not mar ried. If you were you would understand, perhaps, how a man might be tempted to give up the effort to realize an impossible ideal, for the sake of a beautiful and beloved wife."

"Then," said Karl, quickly, "you have not married that dark girl to whom you told me you were engaged when we were in Rome?"

"No," said Maurice, "I have not married her," and taking up his brush he gave a few touches to the portrait on his easel.

Karl praised the beauty of the face, which was a very lovely one.

"I can show you one a thousand times more beautiful," said Maurice, and he led Karl to a painting in which Claire was depicted as the Scandinavian Goddess, Freya, wrapped in furs and seated in a sledge drawn by a troop rein-deer. Very lovely the Goddess looked, her blue eyes and golden locks

"Then why not give it up?" said Karl. "I cannot. I am entangled in a net from which I have no power to escape. Pride, vanity, the love of ease and pleasure, the dread of poverty, contempt and obscurity, all hold me in their meshes, and even if I could summon courage and strength to break through these, there are other obstacles. I have no right to darken the destiny of those whose fate is linked with mine, that I may follow that ideal which nearly all who have ever sought it have found to be nothing but a shadow or a dream.

veloped her like glimpses of sunshine and blue sky breaking through clouds, and Karl expressed as much admiration as even Maurice could have desired.

"And who may this fair enchantress be?" asked Karl Rudorff.

"She is my wife," said Maurice ; was I not right in saying she was too lovely a creature to be exposed to the hard and toilsome life of an artist who aspires to attain greatness in high art?"

"Yes," said Karl, "she looks as if she had always lived among roses and never felt a thorn. It seems to me that I have seen some one like her before, though not so beautiful. I doubt if I have ever seen so faultlessly beautiful a face."

visions of ineffable beauty. Her right hand was yielded to her glorious guide, and her feet, her small bare feet, which looked far too white, too soft and delicate to encounter the sharp rocks which beset the way, seemed attempting to follow him, but her eyes were turned away from him, and she was gazing with a deep and mournful longing into the lovely valley she was about to leave forever: -the valley where cottage homes and fertile fields and fair gardens were peacefully resting, where quiet days,and happy hearts, and all those soft and gentle delights she was never to know again had their home. Maurice believed he could not mistake the hand which had painted that picture, though its power and skill were now far greater than when he had watched and aided its labours. "This is very beautiful," said Karl after the young men had looked at it for some time in profound silence. "It seems strange that any one who could produce such a picture should not have been known before. We must find out the artist, Maurice."

But Maurice could not answer. A thousand remembrances agitated him painfully and choked his voice. Karl saw his emotion with surprise, and then, turning to the picture, seemed again absorbed in its contemplation. "Stay here one minute," said Maurice at last; "I will go and look at a catalogue. Perhaps we shall learn something from it."

The catalogue confirmed what indeed had needed no confirmation to Maurice. It is true, only the initials M. K. were there, but the name of the street would alone have been sufficient proof, if any had been need ed, where a thousand familiar touches had revealed the painter to him as clearly as the well-known hand writing of a letter reveals the writer's name. Marguerite was the painter, and Maurice had known it from the first.

"Well, have you learned anything?" asked Karl when Maurice returned, "do you know the artist ?"

girl whose likeness you admired so much in Rome-that girl you spoke of this morning she is the artist."

Karl's eyes flashed, and that smile, which when it came gave such beauty to his grave face, brightened it now.

"I always knew she was a grand creature," he said. "And this glorious woman might have been yours, Maurice, and you gave her up for a fair face!"

"Not a fair face only," said Maurice, "but a face that you yourself have called the most beautiful in the world, and a sweet nature and loving heart along with it."

"She, too, would have brought you a sweet and loving heart, and with it a soul whose companionship would have driven all low and trivial aims and objects away from you, and strengthened into firm purpose and resolute action the noble aspirations that once were yours. Do you think that the woman who painted yonder picture could not love-and that with a passionate depth and intensity which feeble and shallow natures never know? Look at yonder Psyche as she gazes after her lost happiness with a wild regret, a yearning tenderness in her eyes which move us like mournful music. Look at the girl Laurence in that drawing from Lamartine's Jocelyn as she watches the words falling from her teacher's lips with such admiring and trusting devotion. The woman who could thus paint love, must have felt it. Her pictures have a power which nothing but the symbols of reality ever possess. "Surely in her you threw away a gem richer than all her tribe.'

"Suppose you try to obtain the gem for yourself," said Maurice bitterly. "I will give you an introduction if you like."

"No, I would not accept an introduction from you. I should deem it a bad omen. If fate has destined us to be friends we shall meet in some other way. As for her love, she threw it away on the sands, and there is none left for me. Such women do not love

CHAPTER XXI.

THE WOMAN'S SORROW.

THOUG

HOUGH Karl Rudorff had given himself a holiday, he did not intend to spend it all in idleness. Among his other artistic studies, Gothic architecture had been included, and his visit to France had been chiefly caused by his desire to see and examine its grand medieval cathedrals, and its beautiful old churches. He intended after he had seen all that Paris contained worth seeing, to proceed to Normandy, where he expected to find rare feasts for his eye and imagination, and valuable studies for his pencil.

He was engaged to spend the rest of the day with a friend and countryman living in Paris, who had promised to accompany him that afternoon to the place which of all others in Paris he most wished to see-the Church of Notre Dame. Notre Dame, round which Victor Hugo's genius has thrown such passion and such power that we can no longer think of it, except as a living, sentient being, with the fearful secrets and mysterious crimes of the dark ages of Christendom locked up in its conscious

stones.

As soon as the young men left the Louvre they separated accordingly, and Maurice then turned hastily in a direction he had not taken for years, and after a long and rapid walk, found himself at the door of Marguerite's dwelling. It was opened for him by Mère Monica, who not at first recognizing him, looked at him with surprise when he coolly passed her by and entered the hall.

“I see you have forgotten me, Mère Monica," he said, smiling at her indignant

air.

"Mon Dieu! Monsieur Maurice, is it you?" she exclaimed. "Forgotten you? Yes indeed. There is no room in my little memory for so great a man as you are now." Maurice laughed, but Mère Monica

thought not so pleasantly as he used to laugh in the old days. "Tell Mademoiselle Marguerite that I am here," he said, walking into the little sitting room once so familiar and so dear.

He had not expected to find Marguerite there, and he started when he saw her. She was sitting on a low chair at the open glass door-a book was lying near her, but she was not reading; her clasped hands rested on her knee, and she was looking out on the garden, bright with spring blossoms and balmy with their living perfumes, listening to the soft west wind rustling the green silken leaves of the trees, and watching the fleecy clouds as they floated over the blue sky. Maurice could almost have believed that the years which had passed since they met were a dream. He had seen her sitting in that spot and in that attitude a hundred times, and with just such a look, half thoughtful, half dreamy, on her face. The very colour of her grey dress, the very folds of her rich black hair seemed the same.

She had not heard him enter the house, and when he suddenly opened the parlour door and stood hefore her, she started from her seat—as if a ghost from the dead had come to visit her.

"You are surprised to see me, Marguerite," said Maurice; "but I could not help coming to congratulate you on the great triumph you have obtained, and to tell you how exquisitely beautiful I think your picture. My praise will not count for much after that of Royalty and Royal Academicians; but it is, at least, as sincere as theirs, Marguerite."

Indeed, Maurice, it is much more valuable to me; you know I never cared much for the world's praise."

"But you care for having conquered the difficulties and penetrated the mysteries of art; for having developed your powers and given adequate expression to your genius. You care for the faculty of seeing and revealing the inner truth and beauty of life