"Ah, mine Gott be praised! mine Gott be praised!" exclaimed Mr. Bruder, who had to leave the room to prevent an explosion of his grateful, happy feelings that might have proved too rude a tempest for Dennis in his weak state. He was next seen striding across the fields to a neighboring grove, ejaculating as he went. When he returned his eyes shone with a great peace and joy, and he had evidently been with Him who had cast out the demon from his heart.

Day after day Dennis rallied. Unlike poor Christine, he had beneath him the two strongest levers, love and prayer, and steadily they lifted him up to health and strength and comparative peace. At last he was able to sit up and walk about feebly, and Mr. Bruder returned rejoicing to his family. As he wrung Dennis's hand at parting, he said, in rather a hoarse voice: "If any von tell me Gott is not goot and heareth not prayer, den I tell him he von grand heathen. Oh! but we vill velcome you soon. Ve vill haf de grandest supper, de grandest songs, de grandest—" but just here Mr. Bruder thought it prudent to pull his big fur cap over his eyes, and make a rush for the stage.

As if by tacit understanding, Christine's name had not been mentioned during Dennis's recovery. But one evening, after the little girls had been put to bed, and the lamp shaded, he sat in the dimly lighted room, looking fixedly for a long time at the glowing embers. His mother was moving quietly about, putting away the tea-things, clearing up after the children's play; but as she worked she furtively watched him. At last coming to his side she pushed back the hair that seemed so dark in contrast with the thin, white face and said, gently, "You are thinking of Miss Ludolph, Dennis."

He had some blood yet, for that was not the glow of the fire that suffused his cheek; but he only answered, quietly, "Yes, mother."

Do you think you can forget her?"

"I don't know."

"Prayer is a mighty thing, my son."

"But perhaps it is not God's will that I should ever win her," said Dennis, despondently.

"Then surely it is not yours, my child."

"No, mother," said Dennis, with bowed head and low tone, "but yet I am human and weak."

"You would still wish that it were His will?"

"Yes; I could not help it."

"But you would submit?"

"Yes, with His help I would," firmly.

"That is sufficient, my boy; I have such confidence in God that I know this matter will result in a way to secure you the greatest happiness in the end."

But after a little time he sighed, wearily, "Yet how hard it is to wait till the great plan is worked out!"

Solemnly she quoted-"God will render to every man according to his deeds. To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life."

Braced by the stirring words of inspiration, strengthened by his mother's faith, he looked up after a moment and said, earnestly, "At any rate I will try to be a man in your sense of the word, and that is saying a great deal."

She beamed at him through her spectacles over her knitting-needles; and he thought, as he gazed fondly at her, that in spite of her quaint, old-fashioned garb, and homely occupation, she appeared more truly a saint than any painted on cathedral windows.

He soon noticed that his mother had grown feeble, and he determined to take her with him on his return, believing that, by his care, and the wise use of tonics, he could restore her to her wonted strength. His increased salary now justified the step.

Early in November his physician said he might return to business if he would be prudent. He gladly availed himself of the permission, for he longed to be employed again.

The clerks all welcomed him warmly, for his good-nature had disarmed jealousy at his rapid rise. But in the greeting of Mr. Ludolph he missed something of the cordiality he expected.

"Perhaps she has told him," thought he; and at once his own manner became tinged with a certain coldness and dignity. He determined that both father and daughter should think of him only with respect.

At the Bruders' the millennium came with Dennis. Metaphorically the fatted calf was killed; their plain little room was trimmed with evergreens, and when he entered he was greeted by such a jubilant, triumphant chorus of welcomes as almost took away his breath. What little he had left was suddenly squeezed out of him; for Mrs. Bruden, dropping her frying-pan and dish-cloth, rushed upon him, exclaiming, "Ah! mine fren! mine fren! De goot Gott be praised;" and she gave him an embrace that made his bones ache.

Mr. Bruder stalked about the room repeating with explosive energy, like minute-guns, "Praise Gott! Praise Gott!" Ernst, his great eyes dimmed with happy tears, clung to Dennis's hand, as if he would make sure, by sense of touch as well as sight, that he had regained his beloved teacher. The little Bruders were equally jubilant, though from rather mixed motives. Dennis's arrival was very well, but they could not keep their round eyes long off the preparations for such a supper as never before had blessed their brief career.

"Truly," thought Dennis, as he looked around upon the happy family, and contrasted its appearance with that which it had presented when he first saw it, "my small investment of kindness and effort in this case has returned large interest. I think it pays to do good."

The evening was one of almost unmingled happiness, even to his sore, disappointed heart, and passed into memory as among the sunniest places of his life.

He found a pleasant little cottage over on the West side, part of which he rented for his mother and sisters.

With Mr. Ludolph's permission he went after them, and installed them in it. Thus he had what he had needed all along—a home, a resting-place for body and soul, under the watchful eye of love.

About this time Dr. Arten met him, stared a moment, then clapped him on the back in his hearty way, saying, "Well, well, young man! you have cause to be thankful, and not to the doctors, either."

"I think I am," said Dennis, smiling.

Suddenly the doctor looked grave, and asked in a stern voice, "Are you a heathen, or a good Christian?"

"I hope not the former," replied Dennis, a little startled.

"Then don't go and commit suicide again. Don't you know flesh and blood can only stand so much? When an intelligent young fellow like you goes beyond that, he is committing suicide. Bless your soul, my ambitious friend, the ten commandments ain't all the law of God. His laws are also written all over this long body of yours, and you came near paying a pretty penalty for breaking them. You won't get off the second time."

"You are right, doctor; I now see that I acted very wrongly."

"'Bring forth fruits meet for repentance.' I am rich enough to give sound advice," said the brusque old physician, passing on.

"Stop a moment, doctor," cried Dennis, "I want you to see my mother."

"What is the matter with her? She been breaking the commandments, too?"

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Dennis. "She is not a bit of a heathen."

"I am not so sure about that. I know many eminent saints in the church who will eat lobster salad for supper, and then send for the doctor and minister before morning. There is a precious twaddle about 'mysterious Providence.' Providence isn't half so mysterious as people make out. The doctor is expected to look serious and sympathetic, and call their law-breaking and its penalty by some outlandish Latin name that no one can understand. I give 'em the square truth, and tell 'em they've been breaking the commandments."

Dennis could not forbear smiling at the doctor's rough handling of humbug, even in one of its most respectable guises. Then, remembering his mother, he added, gravely: "I am truly anxious about my mother, she has grown so feeble. I want, and yet dread, the truth."

The bantering manner of the good old doctor changed at once, and he said, kindly, "I'll come, my boy, within a few days, though I am nearly run off my feet."

He went off, muttering, "Why don't the people send for some of the youngsters that sit kicking up their heels in their offices all day?"

Dennis soon fell into the routine of work and rapidly grew stronger. But his face had acquired a gravity, a something in expression that only experience gives, which made him appear older by ten years. All trace of the boy had gone, and his countenance was now that of the man, and of one who had suffered.

As soon as he recovered sufficient strength to act with decision, he indignantly tried to banish Christine's image from his memory. But he found this impossible. Though at times his eyes would flash, in view of her treatment, they would soon grow gentle and tender, and he found himself excusing and extenuating, by the most special pleadings, that which he had justly condemned.

One evening his mother startled him out of a long revery, in which he had almost vindicated Christine, by saying, "A very pleasant smile has been gradually dawning on your face, my son."

"Mother," replied he, hesitatingly, "perhaps I have judged Miss Ludolph harshly."

"Your love, not your reason, has evidently been pleading for her."

"Well, mother, I suppose you are right."

"So I suppose the Divine love pleads for the weak and sinful," said Mrs. Fleet, dreamily.

"That is a very pleasant thought, mother, for sometimes it seems that my love could make black white."

"That the Divine love has done, but at infinite cost to itself."

"Oh that my love at any cost to itself could lead her into the new life of the believer!" said Dennis, in a low, earnest tone.

"Your love is like the Divine in being unselfish, but remember the vital differences and take heed. God can change the nature of the imperfect creature that He loves. You cannot. His love is infinite in its strength and patience. You are human. The proud, selfish, unbelieving Miss Ludolph (pardon mother's plain words) could not make you happy. To the degree that you were loyal to God, you would be unhappy, and I should surely dread such a union. The whole tone of your moral character would have to be greatly lowered to permit even peace."

"But, mother," said Dennis, almost impatiently, "in view of my unconquerable love, it is nearly the same as if I were married to her now."

"No, my son, I think not. I know your pretty theory on this subject, but it seems more pretty than true. Marriage makes a vital difference. It is the closest union that we can voluntarily form on earth, and is the emblem of the spiritual oneness of the believer's soul with Christ. We may be led through circumstances, as you have been, to love one with whom we should not form such a union. Indeed, in the true and mystic meaning of the rite, you could not marry Christine Ludolph. The Bible declares that man and wife shall be one. Unless she changes, unless you change (and that God forbid), this could not be. You would be divided, separated in the deepest essentials of your life here, and in every respect hereafter. Again, while God loves every sinful man and woman, He does not take them to His heart till they cry out to Him for strength to abandon the destroying evil He hates. There are no unchanged, unrenewed hearts in heaven."

"Oh, mother, how inexorable is your logic!" said Dennis, breathing heavily.

"Truth in the end is ever more merciful than falsehood," she answered, gently.

After a little, he said, with a heavy sigh, "Mother, you are right, and I am very weak and foolish."

She looked at him with unutterable tenderness. She could not crush out all hope, and so whispered, as before: "Prayer is mighty, my child. It is not wrong for you to love. It is your duty, as well as privilege, to pray for her. Trust your Heavenly Father, do His will, and He will solve this question in the very best way."

Dennis turned to his mother in sudden and passionate earnestness, and said: "Your prayers are mighty, mother, I truly believe. Oh, pray for her—for my sake as well as hers. Looking from the human side, I am hopeless. It is only God's almighty power that can make us, as you say, truly one. I fear that now she is only a heartless, fashionable girl. Yet, if she is only this, I do not see how I came to love her as I do. But my trust now is in your prayers to God."

"And in your own also: the great Father loves you, too, my son. If He chooses that the dross in her character should be burned away, and your two lives fused, there are in His providence just the fiery trials, just the circumstances that will bring it about." (Was she unconsciously uttering a prophecy?) "The crucible of affliction, the test of some great emergency, will often develop a seemingly weak and frivolous girl into noble life, where there is real gold of latent worth to be acted on."

"Christine Ludolph is anything but weak and frivolous," said he. "Her character is strong, and I think most decided in its present bent. But as you say, if the Divine Alchemist wills it, He can change even the dross to gold, and turn unbelief to faith."

Hope, Christine! There is light coming, though as yet you cannot see it. There are angels of mercy flying toward you, though you cannot hear the rustle of their wings. The dark curtain of death and despair can never shut down upon a life linked to heaven by such true, strong prayer. And yet the logical results of wrong-doing will work themselves out, sin must be punished and faith sorely tried.

Dennis heard incidentally that Christine was absent on a visit to New York, but he knew nothing of the time of her return.

He now bent himself steadily and resolutely to the mastering of his business, and under Mr. Bruder's direction resumed his art studies, though now in such moderation as Dr. Arten would commend.

He also entered on an artistic effort that would tax his powers and genius to the very utmost, of which more anon.

By the time Christine returned, he was quite himself again, though much paler and thinner than when he first entered the store.

After Christine had been at home nearly a week, her father, to rouse her out of her listlessness, said one morning: "We have recently received quite a remarkable painting from Europe. You will find it in the upper show-room, and had better come down to-day to see it, for it may be sold soon. I think you would like to copy one or two figures in it."

The lassitude from her New York dissipation was passing away, and her active nature beginning to assert itself again. She started up and said, "Wait five minutes and I will get sketching materials and go down with you."

By reason of her interdict, made at West Point, so earnestly, and indeed fiercely, and confirmed by her manner, her father had never mentioned the name of Dennis Fleet. The very fact that no one had spoken of him since that dreadful day when tidings came in on every side that he could not live was confirmation in her mind that he was dead.

She dreaded going to the store, especially for the first time, for everything would irresistibly remind her of him whom she could not think of now without a pang. But as the ordeal must come, why, the sooner it was over the better. So a few moments later her hand was on her father's arm, and they were on their way to the Art Building as in happier days.

Mr. Ludolph went to his office, and Christine, looking neither to the right nor to the left, ascended to the upper show-room, and at once sought to engage every faculty in making the sketch her father had suggested. Since Dennis was not, as she believed, either on the earth or elsewhere, she tried to take up life again as it had been before he came, and to act as if he had never been.

Hopeless task! In that familiar place, where they had begun the rearrangement of the store, everything spoke of him. She saw his glowing cheeks; again his dark, eager eyes followed her every movement and interpreted her wishes even before she could speak. Some of the pictures on the walls his hands had handled, and in her strong fancy his lithe form seemed moving the ladder to take them down again, while she, with heart and mind at rest, looked with growing curiosity and interest on her humble helper.

What changes had occurred within a short half-year! She shuddered at the thought that one who was then so instinct with life and happiness could now be dust and nothingness, and she the cause.

Association and conscience were again too powerful. She was becoming nervous and full of a strange unrest, so she concluded to finish her sketch at another time. As she was gathering up her materials she heard some one enter the room.

She was in such a morbid, unstrung state that the least thing startled her. But imagine if you can her wonder and terror as she saw Dennis Fleet—the dead and buried, as she fully believed—enter, carrying a picture as of old, and looking as of old, save that he was paler and thinner. Was it an apparition? or, as she had read, had she dwelt so long on this trouble that her mind and imagination were becoming disordered and able to place their wild creations before her as realities?

Her sketching materials fell clattering to the floor, and after one sharp exclamation of alarm she stood as if transfixed, with parted lips and dilated eyes, panting like a frightened bird.

If a sculptor had wished to portray the form and attitude of one startled by the supernatural, never could he have found a more fitting model than Christine at this moment.

As she had been seated a little on one side Dennis had not seen her at first; but, on recognizing her so unexpectedly, he was scarcely less startled than she, and the valuable picture he was carrying nearly met sudden destruction. But he had no such reason as Christine for the continuance of his surprise, and, at once recovering himself, he set the picture against the wall.

This made the illusion still more strange and terrible to Christine. There was the dead before her, doing just as she had been imagining—just what he had done at her bidding months before.

Dennis was greatly puzzled by her look of alarm and distress. Then he thought that perhaps she feared he would break out in bitter and angry invectives again, and he advanced toward her to assure her of the contrary.

Slowly and instinctively she retreated and put up her hands with a deprecatory gesture.

"She cannot endure the sight of me," thought he, but at once he said, with dignified courtesy: "Miss Ludolph, you have nothing to fear from me, that you should regard me in that manner. You need not shrink as if from contagion. We can treat each other as courteous strangers, at least."

"I—I—I—thought you were dead!" she gasped, in a loud whisper.

Dennis's cheek grew paler than it had been in all his sickness, and then as suddenly became dark with anger. His eyes were terrible in their indignation as he advanced a few paces almost fiercely. She trembled violently and shrunk further away.

"You thought I was dead?" he asked, sternly.

"Ye-e-s," in the same unnatural whisper.

"What!" he exclaimed, in short and bitter emphasis, "do you mean to say that you never cared even to ask whether I lived or died in my long, weary illness?—that you were so supremely indifferent to my fate that you could not articulate one sentence of inquiry? Surely this is the very sublimity of heartlessness; this is to be callous beyond one's power of imagination. It seems to me that I would feel as much interest as that in any human being I had once known. If even a dog had licked my hand in good-will, and afterward I had seen it, wounded or sick, creep off into covert, the next time I passed that way I would step aside to see whether the poor creature had lived or died. But after all the wealth of affection that I lavished upon you, after toiling and almost dying in my vain effort to touch your marble heart, you have not even the humanity to ask if I am above ground!"

The illusion had now passed from Christine's mind, and with it her alarm. The true state of the case was rapidly dawning upon her, and she was about to speak eagerly; but in his strong indignation he continued, impetuously: "You thought I was dead! The wish probably was father to the thought. My presumption deserved no better fate. But permit me to tell you, though all unbidden, I did not die. With God's blessing I expect to live to a good old age, and intend that but few years shall pass before my name is as well known and honored as the ancient one of Ludolph;" and he turned on his heel and strode from the room.



CHAPTER XXXVII

IF HE KNEW!

For a little time after Dennis's angry tread died away, Christine sat almost paralyzed by surprise and deeper emotion. Her mind, though usually clear and rapid in its action, was too confused to realize the truth. Suddenly she sprang up, gathered together her sketching materials, and drawing a thick veil over her face sped through the store, through the streets, to the refuge of her own room. She must be alone.

Hastily throwing aside her wrappings, she began to walk up and down in her excitement. Her listlessness was gone now in very truth, and her eye and cheek glowed as never before. As if it had become the great vivifying principle of her own life, she kept repeating continually in a low, ecstatic tone, "He lives! he lives! he is not dead; his blood is not upon my conscience!"

At last she sat down in her luxurious chair before the window to think it all over—to commune with herself—often the habit of the reserved and solitary. From the disjointed sentences she let fall, from the reflection of her excited face in yonder glass, we gather quite correctly the workings of her mind. Her first words were, "Thank heaven! thank something or other, I have not blotted out that true, strong genius."

Again—"What untold wretchedness I might have saved myself if I had only asked the question, in a casual way, 'How is Mr. Fleet?' Christine Ludolph, with all your pride and imagined superiority, you can be very foolish.

"How he hates and despises me now! little wonder!"

"But if he knew!"

"Knew what? Why could you not ask after him, as after any other sick man? You have had a score or so of offers, and did not trouble yourself as to the fate of the lovelorn swains. Seems to me your conscience has been very tender in this case. And the fact that he misjudges you, thinks you callous, heartless, and is angry, troubles you beyond measure."

"When before were you so sensitive to the opinion of clerks and trades-people, or even the proudest suitors for your hand? But in this case you must cry out, in a tone of sentimental agony, 'Oh, if he only knew I'"

"Knew what?"

Her face in yonder mirror has a strange, introverted expression, as if she were scanning her own soul. Her brow contracts with thought and perplexity.

Gradually a warm, beautiful light steals into her face, transforming it as from the scowl of a winter morning into a dawn of June; her eyes become gentle and tender. A rich color comes out upon her cheeks, spreads up her temples, mantles her brow, and pours a crimson torrent down her snowy neck. Suddenly she drops her burning face into her hands, and hides a vision one would gladly look longer upon. But see, even her little ears have become as red as coral.

The bleakest landscape in the world brightens into something like beauty when the sun shines upon it. So love, the richer, sweeter light of the soul, make the plainest face almost beautiful; but when it changed Christine Ludolph's faultless, yet too cold and classical, features into those of a loving woman's, it suggested a beauty scarcely human.

A moment later there came a faint whisper: "I fear—I almost fear I love him." Then she lifted a startled, frightened face and looked timidly around as if, in truth, walls had ears.

Reassured by the consciousness of solitude, her head dropped on her wrist and her revery went forward. Her eyes became dreamy, and a half-smile played upon her lips as she recalled proof after proof of his affection, for she knew the cruel words of the last interview were the result of misunderstanding.

But suddenly she darted from her seat and began pacing the room in the strongest perturbation.

"Mocked again!" she cried; "the same cruel fate! my old miserable experience in a new aspect! With everything within my reach, save the one thing I want, I possess the means of all kinds of happiness except that which makes me happy. In every possible way I am pledged to a career and future in which he can take no part. Though my heart is full of the strangest, sweetest chaos, and I do not truly understand myself, yet I am satisfied that this is not a school-girl's fancy. But my father would regard it as the old farce repeated. Already he suspects and frowns upon the matter. I should have to break with him utterly and forever. I should have to give up all my ambitious plans and towering hopes of life abroad. A plain Mrs. in this city of shops is a poor substitute for a countess's coronet and a villa on the Rhine."

Her cheek flushed, and her lip curled.

"That indeed would be the very extravagance of romance, and how could I, least of all, who so long have scoffed at such things, explain my action? These mushroom shopkeepers, who were all nobodies the other day, elevate their eyebrows when a merchant's daughter marries her father's clerk. But when would the wonder cease if a German lady of rank followed suit?

"Then again my word, my honor, every sacred pledge I could give, forbids such folly.

"Would to heaven I had never seen him, for this unfortunate fancy of mine must be crushed in its inception; strangled before it comes to master me as it has mastered him."

After a long and weary sigh she continued: "Well, everything is favorable for a complete and final break between us. He believes me heartless and wicked to the last degree. I cannot undeceive him without showing more than he should know. I have only to avoid him, to say nothing, and we drift apart.

"If we could only have been friends he might have helped me so much! but that now is clearly impossible—yes, for both of us.

"Truly one of these American poets was right:

"'For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these—It might have been.'

"But thanks to the immortal gods, as the pious heathen used to say, his blood is not on my hands, and this has taken a mountain off my heart. Thus relieved I can perhaps forget all the miserable business. Fate forbids that I, as it has forbidden that many another high-born woman, should marry where she might have loved."

If Christine's heart was wronged, her pride was highly gratified by this conclusion. Here was a new and strong resemblance between herself and the great. In mind she recalled the titled unfortunates who had "loved where they could not marry," and with the air and feeling of a martyr to ancestral grandeur she pensively added her name to the list.

With her conscience freed from its burden of remorse, with the knowledge, so sweet to every woman, that she might accept this happiness if she would, in spite of her airs of martyrdom, the world had changed greatly for the better, and with the natural buoyancy of youth she reacted into quite a cheerful and hopeful state.

Her father noticed this on his return to dinner in the evening, and sought to learn its cause. He asked, "How did you make out with your sketch?"

"I made a beginning," she answered, with some little color rising to her cheek.

"Perhaps you were interrupted?"

"Why did you not tell me that Mr. Fleet had recovered?" she asked, abruptly.

"Why, did you think he was dead?"

"Yes."

Mr. Ludolph indulged in a hearty laugh (he knew the power of ridicule).

"Well, that is excellent!" he said. "You thought the callow youth had died on account of your hardness of heart; and this explains your rather peculiar moods and tenses of late. Let me assure you that a Yankee never dies from such a cause."

Mr. Ludolph determined if possible to break down her reserve and let in the garish light, which he knew to be most fatal to all romantic fancies, that ever thrive best in the twilight of secrecy. But she was on the alert now, and in relief of mind had regained her poise and the power to mask her feeling. So she said in a tone tinged with cold indifference, "You may be right, but I had good reason to believe to the contrary, and, as I am not altogether without a conscience, you might have saved much pain by merely mentioning the fact of his recovery."

"But you had adjured me with frightful solemnity never to mention his name again," said her father, still laughing.

Christine colored and bit her lip. She had forgotten for the moment this awkward fact.

"I was nervous, sick, and not myself that day, and every one I met could speak of nothing but Mr. Fleet."

"Well, really," he said, "in the long list of the victims that you have wounded if not slain, I never supposed my clerk and quondam man-of-all-work would prove so serious a case."

"A truce to your bantering, father! Mr. Fleet is humble only in station, not in character, not in ability. You know I have never been very tender with the 'victims,' as you designate them, of the Mellen stamp; but Mr. Fleet is a man, in the best sense of the word, and one that I have wronged. Now that the folly is past I may as well explain to you some things that have appeared strange. I think I can truly say that I have given those gentlemen who have honored, or rather annoyed me, by their unwished-for regard, very little encouragement. Therefore, I was not responsible for any follies they might commit. But for artistic reasons I did encourage Mr. Fleet's infatuation. You remember how I failed in making a copy of that picture. In my determination to succeed, I hit upon the rather novel expedient of inspiring and copying the genuine thing. You know my imitative power is better than my imagination, and I thought that by often witnessing the expression of feeling and passion, I might learn to portray it without the disagreeable necessity of passing through any such experiences myself. But the experiment, as you know, did not work well. These living subjects are hard to manage, and, as I have said, I am troubled by a conscience."

Mr. Ludolph's eyes sparkled, and a look of genuine admiration lighted up his features.

"Brava!" he cried; "your plan was worthy of you and of your ancestry. It was a real stroke of genius. You were too tender-hearted, otherwise it would have been perfect. What are the lives of a dozen such young fellows compared with the development and perfection of such a woman as you bid fair to be?"

Christine had displayed in this transaction just the qualities that her father most admired. But even she was shocked at his callousness, and lifted a somewhat startled face to his.

"Your estimate of human life is rather low," she said.

"Not at all. Is not one perfect plant better than a dozen imperfect ones? The gardener often pulls up the crowding and inferior ones to throw them about the roots of the strongest, that in their death and decay they may nourish it to the highest development. The application of this principle is evident. They secure most in this world who have the skill and power to grasp most."

"But how about the rights of others? Conscious men and women are not plants."

"Let them be on their guard then. Every one is for himself in this world. That can be plainly seen through the thin disguises that some try to assume. After all, half the people we meet are little better than summer weeds."

Christine almost shuddered to think that the one bound to her by closest ties cherished such sentiments toward the world, and probably, to a certain extent, toward herself, but she only said, quietly: "I can hardly subscribe to your philosophy as yet, though I fear I act upon it too often. Still it does not apply to Mr. Fleet. He is gifted in no ordinary degree, and doubtless will stand high here in his own land in time. And now, as explanation has been made, with your permission we will drop this subject out of our conversation as before."

"Well," said Mr. Ludolph to himself, between sips of his favorite Rhine wine, "I have gained much light on the subject to-night, and I must confess that, even with my rather wide experience, the whole thing is a decided novelty. If Christine were only less troubled with conscience, over-fastidiousness, or whatever it is—if she were more moderate in her ambition as an artist, and could be satisfied with power and admiration, as other women are—what a star she might become in the fashionable world of Europe! But, for some reason, I never feel sure of her. Her spirit is so wilful and obstinate, and she seems so full of vague longing after an ideal, impossible world, that I live in constant dread that she may be led into some folly fatal to my ambition. This Fleet is a most dangerous fellow. I wish I were well rid of him; still, matters are not so bad as I feared—that is, if she told me the whole truth, which I am inclined to doubt. But I had better keep him in my employ during the few months we still remain in this land, as I can watch over him, and guard against his influence better than if he were beyond my control. But no more promotion or encouragement does he get from me."

Janette, Christine's French maid, passed the open door. The thought struck Mr. Ludolph that he might secure an ally in her.

The unscrupulous creature was summoned, and agreed for no very large sum to become a spy upon Christine, and report anything looking toward friendly relations with Dennis Fleet.

"The game is still in my hands," said the wary man. "I will yet steer my richly-freighted argosy up the Rhine. Here's to Christine, the belle of the German court!" and he filled a slender Venetian glass to the brim, drained it, and then retired.

Christine, on reaching her room, muttered to herself: "He now knows all that I mean he ever shall. We are one in our ambition, if nothing else, and therefore our relations must be to a certain degree confidential and amicable. And now forget you have a conscience, forget you have a heart, and, above all things, forget that you have ever seen or known Dennis Fleet."

Thus the influence of a false education, a proud, selfish, ambitious life, decided her choice. She plunged as resolutely into the whirl of fashionable gayety about her as she had in the dissipations of New York, determined to forget the past, and kill the time that must intervene before she could sail away to her brilliant future in Germany.

But she gradually learned that, if conscience had robbed her of peace before, something else disturbed her now, and rendered her efforts futile. She found that there was a principle at work in her heart stronger even than her resolute will. In spite of her purpose to the contrary, she caught herself continually thinking of Dennis, and indulging in strange, delicious reveries in regard to him.

At last she ceased to shun the store as she had done at first, but with increasing frequency found some necessity for going there.

After the interview in the show-room, Dennis was driven to the bitter conclusion that Christine was utterly heartless, and cared not a jot for him. His impression was confirmed by the fact that she shunned the store, and that he soon heard of her as a belle and leader in the ultra-fashionable world. He, too, bitterly lamented that he had ever seen her, and was struggling with all the power of his will to forget her. He fiercely resolved that, since she wished him dead, she should become dead to him.

Almost immediately after his return he had discovered that the two emblematical pictures had been removed from the loft over the store. He remembered that he had spoken of them to Christine, and from Ernst he gathered that she herself had taken them away. It was possible, he believed, that she had made them the subject of ridicule. At best she must have destroyed them in order to blot out all trace of a disagreeable episode. Whatever may have been their fate, they had, as he thought, failed in their purpose, and were worthless to him, and he was far too proud to make inquiries.

As the weeks passed on, he apparently succeeded better than she. There was nothing in her character, as she then appeared, that appealed to anything gentle or generous. She seemed so proud, so strong and resolute in her choice of evil, so devoid of the true womanly nature, as he had learned to reverence it in his mother, that he could not pity, much less respect her, and even his love could scarcely survive under such circumstances.

When she began coming to the store again, though his heart beat thick and fast at her presence, he turned his back and seemed not to see her, or made some errand to a remote part of the building. At first she thought this might be accident, but she soon found it a resolute purpose to ignore her very existence. By reason of a trait peculiar to Christine, this was only the more stimulating. She craved all the more that which was seemingly denied.

Accustomed to every gratification, to see all yield to her wishes, and especially to find gentlemen almost powerless to resist her beauty, she came to regard this one stern, averted face as infinitely more attractive than all the rest in the world.

"That he so steadily avoids me proves that he is anything but indifferent," she said to herself one day.

She condemned her visits to the store, and often reproached herself with folly in going; but a secret powerful magnetism drew her thither in spite of herself.

Dennis, too, soon noticed that she came often, and the fact awakened a faint hope within him. He learned that his love was not dead, but only chilled and chained by circumstances and his own strong will. True, apart from the fact of her coming, she gave him no encouragement. She was as distant and seemingly oblivious of his existence as he of hers, but love can gather hope from a marvellously little thing.

But one day Christine detected her father watching her movements with the keenest scrutiny, and after that she came more and more rarely. The hope that for a moment had tinged the darkness surrounding Dennis died away like the meteor's transient light.

He went into society very little after his illness, and shunned large companies. He preferred to spend his evenings with his mother and in study. The Winthrops were gone, having removed to their old home in Boston, and he had not formed very intimate acquaintances elsewhere. Moreover, his limited circle, though of the best and most refined, was not one in which Christine often appeared.

But one evening his cheek paled and his heart fluttered as he saw her entering the parlors of a lady by whom he had been invited to meet a few friends. For some little time he studiously avoided her, but at last his hostess, with well-meant zeal, formally presented him.

They bowed very politely and very coldly. The lady surmised that Christine did not care about the acquaintance of her father's clerk, and so brought them no more together. But Christine was pained by Dennis's icy manner, and saw that she was thoroughly misunderstood. When asked to sing, she chose a rather significant ditty:

"Ripple, sparkle, rapid stream, Let your dancing wavelets gleam Quiveringly and bright; Children think the surface glow Reaches to the depth below, Hidden from the light.

"Human faces often seem Like the sparkle of the stream, In the social glare; Some assert, in wisdom's guise, (Look they not with children's eyes?) All is surface there."

As she rose from the piano her glance met his with something like meaning in it, he imagined. He started, flushed, and his face became full of eager questioning. But her father was on the watch also, and, placing his daughter's hand within his arm, he led her into the front parlor, and soon after they pleaded another engagement and vanished altogether.

No chance for explanation came, and soon a new and all-absorbing anxiety filled Dennis's heart, and the shadow of the greatest sorrow that he had yet experienced daily drew nearer.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE GATES OPEN

At Dennis's request, Dr. Arten called and carefully inquired into Mrs. Fleet's symptoms. Her son stood anxiously by awaiting the result of the examination. At last the physician said, cheerily: "There is no immediate occasion for alarm here. I am sorry to say that your mother's lungs are far from strong, but they may carry her through many comfortable years yet. I will prescribe tonics, and you may hope for the best. But mark this well, she must avoid exposure. A severe cold might be most serious in its consequences."

How easy to say, "Do not take cold!" How many whose lives were at stake have sought to obey the warning, but all in vain! Under Dr. Arten's tonics, Mrs. Fleet grew stronger, and Dennis rejoiced over the improvement. But, in one of the sudden changes attendant on the breaking up of winter, the dreaded cold was taken, and it soon developed into acute pneumonia.

For a few days she was very ill, and Dennis never left her side. In the intervals of pain and fever she would smile at him and whisper: "The harbor is near. This rough weather cannot last much longer."

"Mother, do not leave us; we cannot spare you," ever pleaded her son.

Contrary to her expectations, however, she rallied, but continued in a very feeble state. Dennis was able to resume his duties in the store, and he hoped and tried to believe that the warm spring and summer days soon to come would renew his mother's strength. But every day she grew feebler, and Dr. Arten shook his head.

The Bruders were very kind, and it was astonishing how much Mrs. Bruder, though burdened with her large family, found time to do. If Mrs. Fleet had been her own mother she could not have bestowed upon her more loving solicitude. Mr. Bruder was devotion itself. He removed his easel to an attic-room in Mrs. Fleet's house; and every hour of Dennis's absence heard him say: "Vat I do for you now? I feel no goot unless I do someding."

Some little time after Mrs. Fleet was taken sick a mystery arose. The most exquisite flowers and fruits were left at the house from time to time, marked in a bold, manly hand, "For Mrs. Fleet." But all efforts to discover their source failed.

The reader will guess that Christine was the donor, and Dennis hoped it—though, he admitted to himself, with little reason.

Mrs. Fleet had not much pain. She seemed gently wafted as by an ebbing tide away from time and earth, Kindly but firmly she sought to prepare Dennis's mind for the change soon to take place. At first he could not endure its mention, but she said, earnestly: "My son, I am not dying. I am just entering on the true, real, eternal life—a life which is as much beyond this poor feeble existence as the sun is brighter than a glow-worm. I shall soon clasp my dear husband to my heart again, and, oh, ecstasy! I shall soon in reality see the Saviour whom I now see almost continually in vision."

Then again she would turn toward her earthly treasures with unutterable yearning and tenderness.

"Oh, that I could gather you up in my arms and take you all with me!" she would often exclaim. Many times during the day she would call the little girls from their play and kiss their wondering faces.

One evening Dennis came home and found a vase of flowers with a green background of mint at his mother's bedside. Their delicate fragrance greeted him as soon as he entered. As he sat by her side holding her hand, he said, softly: "Mother, are not these sprays of mint rather unusual in a bouquet? Has the plant any special meaning? I have noticed it before mingled with these mysterious flowers."

She smiled and answered, "When I was a girl its language was, 'Let us be friends again.'"

"Do you think—can it be possible that she sends them?" said he, in a low, hesitating tone.

"Prayer is mighty, my son."

"And have you been praying for her all this time, mother?"

"Yes, and will continue to do so to the last."

"Oh, mother! I have lost hope. My heart has been full of bitterness toward her, and I have felt that God was against it all."

"God is not against her learning to know Him, which is life. Jesus has loved her all the time, and she has wronged Him more than she has you."

Dennis bowed his head on his mother's hand, and she felt hot tears fall upon it. At last he murmured: "You are indeed going to heaven soon, dear mother, for your language is not of earth. When will such a spirit dwell within me?"

"Again remember your mother's words," she answered, gently; "prayer is mighty."

"Mother," said he, with a sudden earnestness, "do you think you can pray for us in heaven?"

"I know of no reason to the contrary."

"Then I know you will, and the belief will ever be a source of hope and strength."

Mrs. Fleet was now passing through the land of Beulah. To her strong spiritual vision, the glories of the other shore seemed present, and at times she thought that she really heard music; again it would seem as if her Saviour had entered the plain little room, as He did the humble home at Bethany.

Her thoughts ran much on Christine. One day she wrote, feebly:

"Would Miss Ludolph be willing to come and see a dying woman? ETHEL FLEET."

Mr. Bruder carried it, but most unfortunately Christine was out, so that her maid, ever on the alert to earn the price of her treachery, received it. It was slightly sealed. She opened it, and saw from its contents that it must be given to Mr. Ludolph. He with a frown committed it to the flames.

"I have written to her," she whispered to her son in the evening, "and think she will come to see me."

Dennis was sleepless that night, through his hope and eager expectation. The following day, and the next passed, and she came not.

"I was right," exclaimed he, bitterly. "She is utterly heartless. It was not she who sent the flowers. Who that is human would have refused such a request! Waste no more thought upon her, for she is unworthy, and it is all in vain." "No!" said Mrs. Fleet in sudden energy. "It is not in vain. Have I not prayed again and again? and shall I doubt God?"

"Your faith is stronger than mine," he answered, in deep despondency.

"God's time is not always ours," she answered, gently.

But an angry fire lurked in Dennis's eyes, and he muttered to himself as he went to his room: "She has snapped the last slender cord that bound me to her. I could endure almost anything myself, but that she should refuse to visit my dying mother proves her a monster, with all her beauty."

As he was leaving the house in the morning, his mother whispered, gently, "Who was it that said, 'Father, forgive them, they know not what they do?'"

"Ah, but she does know," said he, bitterly. "I can forgive nearly everything against myself, but not slights to you."

"The time will come when you will forgive everything, my son."

"Not till there is acknowledgment and sorrow for the wrong," answered he, sternly. Then with a sudden burst of tenderness he added: "Good-by, darling mother. I will try to do anything you wish, even though it is impossible;" but his love, through Janette's treachery, suffered the deepest wound it had yet received.

Christine of her own accord had almost decided to call upon Mrs. Fleet, but before she could carry out her purpose while hastily coming downstairs one day, she sprained her ankle, and was confined to her room some little time.

She sent Janette with orders for the flowers, who, at once surmising their destination, said to the florist that she was Miss Ludolph's confidential maid, and would carry them to those for whom they were designed. He, thinking it "all right," gave them to her, and she took them to a Frenchman in the same trade whom she knew, and sold them at half-price, giving him a significant sign to ask no questions. To the same market she brought the fruit; so from that time they ceased as mysteriously as they had appeared at Mrs. Fleet's bedside.

But Dennis was so anxious, and his mother was now failing so rapidly, that he scarcely noted this fact. The warm spring days seemed rather to enervate than to strengthen her. He longed to stay with her constantly, but his daily labor was necessary to secure the comforts needful to an invalid. Every morning he bade her a most tender adieu, and during the day often sent Ernst to inquire how she was.

One evening Christine ventured to send Janette on the same errand and impatiently awaited her return. At last she came, appearing as if flushed and angry.

"Whom did you see?" asked Christine, eagerly.

"I saw Mr. Fleet himself."

"Well, what did he say?"

"He bite his lip, frown, and say, 'Zere is no answer,' and turn on his heel into ze house."

It was now Christine's turn to be angry. "What!" she exclaimed, "does his Bible teach him to forget and forgive nothing? Can it be that he, like the rest of them, believes and acts on only such parts as are to his mood?"

"I don't know nothing about him," said the maid, "only I don't want to go zere again."

"You need not," was the brief reply.

After a long, bitter revery, she sighed: "Ah, well, thus we drift apart. But it is just as well, for apart we must ever be."

One morning early in May Mrs. Fleet was very weak, and Dennis left her with painful misgivings. During the morning he sent Ernst to see how she was, and he soon returned, with wild face, crying, "Come home quick!"

Breaking abruptly from his startled customer, Dennis soon reached his mother's side. Mr. and Mrs. Bruder were sobbing at the foot of the bed, and the girls were pleading piteously on either side—"Oh, mother! please don't go away!"

"Hush!" said Dennis, solemnly. Awed by his manner, all became comparatively silent. He bent over the bed, and said, "Mother, you are leaving us."

The voice of her beloved son rallied the dying woman's wandering mind. After a moment she recognized him, smiled faintly, and whispered: "Yes, I think I am—kiss me—good-by. Bring—the children. Jesus—take care—my little—lambs. Good-by—true—honest friends—meet me—heaven. Dennis—these children—your charge—bring them home—to me. Pray for her. I don't know—why—she seems very—near to me. Farewell—my good—true—son—mother's blessing—God's blessing—ever rest—on you."

Her eyes closed, and she fell into a gentle sleep.

"She vake no more in dis vorld," said Mrs. Bruder, in an awed tone.

Mr. Bruder, unable to control his feelings any longer, hurried from the room. His wife, with streaming eyes, silently dressed the little girls, and took them home with her, crying piteously all the way for mamma.

Pale, tearless, motionless, Dennis sat, hour after hour holding his mother's hand. He noted that her pulse grew more and more feeble. At last the sun in setting broke through the clouds that had obscured it all day, and filled the room with a sudden glory.

To Dennis's great surprise, his mother's eyes opened wide, with the strange, far-off look they ever had when she was picturing to herself the unknown world.

Her lips moved. He bent over her and caught the words: "Hark! hear!—It never was so sweet before. See the angels—thronging toward me—they never came so near before."

Then a smile of joy and welcome lighted up her wan features, and she whispered, "Oh, Dennis, husband—are we once more united?"

Suddenly there was a look of ecstasy such as her son had never seen on any human face, and she cried almost aloud, "Jesus—my Saviour!" and received, as it were, directly into His arms, she passed from earth.

We touch briefly on the scenes that followed. Dennis took the body of his mother to her old home, and buried it under the wide-spreading elm in the village churchyard, where as a happy child and blooming maiden she had often sat between the services. It was his purpose to remove the remains of his father and place them by her side as soon as he could afford it.

His little sisters accompanied him east, and he found a home for them with a sister of his mother, who was a good, kind, Christian lady. Dennis's salary was not large, but sufficient to insure that his sisters would be no burden to his aunt, who was in rather straitened circumstances. He also arranged that the small annuity should be paid for their benefit.

It was hard parting from his sisters, whose little hearts seemed breaking at what appeared to them to be a new bereavement.

"How can I leave them!" he exclaimed, with tears falling fast from his eyes.

"They are children," said his aunt, soothingly, "and will forget their troubles in a few days."

And so it proved; but Dennis, with a sore heart, and feeling very lonely, returned to Chicago.

When at last Christine got out again, she learned from Ernst at the store that Dennis's mother had died, and that he had taken the remains and his sisters east. In his sorrow he seemed doubly interesting to her.

"How I wish it were in my power to cheer and comfort him!" she sighed, "and yet I fear my ability to do this is less than that of any one else. In very truth he seems to despise and hate me now. The barriers between us grow stronger and higher every day. How different it all might have been if—. But what is the use of these wretched 'ifs'? What is the use of resisting this blind, remorseless fate that brings happiness to one and crushes another?"

Wearily and despondingly she rode back to the elegant home in which she found so little enjoyment.

Whom should she met there but Mrs. Von Brakhiem from New York, bound westward with a gay party on a trip to the Rocky Mountains and California? They had stopped to spend a few days in Chicago, and were determined to take Christine on with them. Her father strongly seconded the plan. Though Christine surmised his motive, she did not care to resist. Since she would soon be separated from Dennis forever, the less she saw of him the less would be the pain. Moreover, her sore and heavy heart welcomed any change that would cause forgetfulness; and so it was speedily arranged.

Mrs. Von Brakhiem and her party quite took possession of the Ludolph mansion, and often made it echo with gayety.

On the evening of the day that Dennis buried his mother, Ernst went over at Mr. Ludolph's request to carry a message. He found the house the scene of a fashionable revel. There were music and dancing in the parlors, and from the dining-room the clink of glasses and loud peals of laughter proved that this was not Christine's ideal of an entertainment as she had portrayed it to her father on a former occasion. In truth, she had little to do with the affair; it was quite impromptu, and Mr. Ludolph and Mrs. Von Brakhiem were responsible for it.

But Ernst could not know this, and to him it seemed shocking. The simple funeral service taking place on that day in the distant New England village had never been absent from his thoughts a moment. Since early morning he had gone about with his little face composed to funereal gravity.

His simple, warm-hearted parents felt that they could only show proper respect for the occasion by the deepest gloom. Their rooms were arranged in stiff and formal manner, with crape here and there. All unnecessary work ceased, and the children, forbidden to play, were dressed in mourning as far as possible, and made to sit in solemn and dreadful state all day. It would not have surprised Ernst if the whole city had gone into mourning. Therefore the revelry at the Ludolph mansion seemed to him heartless and awful beyond measure, and nearly the first things he told Dennis on the latter's return was that they had had "a great dancing and drinking party, the night of the funeral, at Mr. Ludolph's." Then, trying to find some explanation for what seemed to him such a strange and wicked thing, he suggested, "Perhaps they meant it for a wake."

Poor little Ernst's ideas of the world, outside of his home, had been gathered from a very low neighborhood.

He also handed Dennis a letter that Mr. Ludolph requested should be given him on his return. It read as follows:

"CHICAGO, May 6, 1871.

"I have been compelled to supply your place in your absence: therefore your services will be no longer needed at this store. Inclosed you will find a check for the small balance still due you, AUGUST LUDOLPH."

Dennis's brow grew very dark, and in bitter soliloquy he said, half aloud, as he strode up and down his little room in great agitation: "And so it all ends! The girl at whose side my mother would have watched in the most dangerous and loathsome of diseases; the woman of ice whom I sought to melt and render human by as warm, true love as ever man lavished on one who rewarded his affection—this beautiful monster will not even visit my mother when dying; she holds a revel on the day of the funeral; and now, through her influence no doubt, I am robbed of the chance of winning honest bread. She cannot even endure the sight of the man who once told her the unvarnished truth. Poor as you deem me, Christine Ludolph, with God's help not many years shall pass before it will be condescension on my part to recognize you."

He would not even go to the store again. The Bruders, having heard what had occurred, took Ernst away also; but Dennis soon found him a better situation elsewhere.

The day on which Dennis returned, Christine was speeding in a palace-car toward the Rocky Mountains, outwardly gay, determined to enjoy herself and carry out her reckless purpose to get the most possible out of life, cost what it might.

If she had been a shallow girl, thoughtless and vain, with only mind enough to take in the events of the passing moment, she might have bought many fleeting pleasures with her abundant wealth. But this she was not, with all her faults, and wherever she went, in the midst of gayest scenes, and in the presence of the grandest and most inspiring scenery, thought and memory, like two spectres that no spell could lay, haunted her and robbed her of peace and any approach to happiness. Though possessing the means of gratifying every whim, though restrained by no scruples from doing what she chose, she felt that all around were getting more from life than she.

During her absence she experienced a sudden and severe attack of illness. Her friends were much alarmed about her, and she far more about herself. All her old terror returned. In one respect she was like her mother; she had no physical courage, but shrank with inexpressible dread from danger, pain, and death. Again the blackness of darkness gathered round her, and not one in the gay pleasure party could say a word to comfort her.

She recovered, and soon regained her usual health, but her self-confidence was more thoroughly shaken. She felt like one in a little cockle-shell boat out upon a shoreless ocean. While the treacherous sea remained calm, all might be well, but she knew that a storm would soon arise, and that she must go down, beyond remedy. Again she had been taught how suddenly, how unexpectedly, that storm might rise.

Dennis resolved at once to enter on the career of an artist. He sold to Mr. French, at a moderate price, some paintings and sketches he had made. He rented a small room that became his studio, sleeping-apartment—in brief, his home, and then went to work with all the ordinary incentives to success intensified by his purpose to reach a social height that would compel Christine to look upward if their acquaintance were renewed.

Disappointment in love is one of the severest tests of character in man or woman. Some sink into weak sentimentality, and mope and languish; some become listless, apathetic, and float down the current of existence like driftwood. Men are often harsh and cynical, and rail at the sex to which their mothers and sisters belong. Sometimes a man inflicts a wellnigh fatal wound and leaves his victim to cure it as best she may. From that time forth she may be like the wronged Indian, who slays as many white men as he can. Not a few, on finding they cannot enter the beautiful paradise of happy love, plunge into imbruting vice, and drown not only their disappointment but themselves in dissipation. Their course is like that of some who deem that the best way to cure a wound or end a disease is to kill the patient as soon as possible. If women have true metal in them (and they usually have) they become unselfishly devoted to others, and by gentle, self-denying ways seek to impart to those about them the happiness denied to themselves.

But with all manly young men the instinct of Dennis is perhaps the most common. They will rise, shine, and dazzle the eyes that once looked scornfully or indifferently at them.

As he worked patiently at his noble calling this smaller ambition was gradually lost in the nobler, broader one, to be a true artist and a good man.

During his illness some gentlemen of large wealth and liberality, who wished to stimulate and develop the native artistic talent of their city, offered a prize of two thousand dollars for the finest picture painted during the year, the artist also having the privilege of selling his work.

On his return after his illness Dennis heard of this, and determined to be one of the competitors. He applied to Mr. Cornell, who had the matter in charge, for permission to enter the lists, which that gentleman granted rather doubtfully. He had known Dennis only as a critic, not as an artist. But having gained his point, Dennis went earnestly to work on the emblematic painting he had resolved upon, and with what success the following chapters will show.

His mother's sickness and death, of course, put a complete shop to his artistic labors for a time, but when entering on his new career, he gave himself wholly to this effort.

The time for exhibition and decision was fixed—Saturday morning October 7, 1871.



CHAPTER XXXIX

SUSIE WINTHROP APPEARS AGAIN

Our story passes rapidly over the scenes and events of the summer and fall of '71. Another heavy blow fell upon Dennis in the loss of his old friend and instructor, Mr. Bruder.

By prayer and effort, his own and others, he was saved morally and spiritually, but he had been greatly shattered by past excess. He was attacked by typhoid fever, and after a few days' illness died. Recovery from this disease depends largely upon strength and purity of constitution. But every one of the innumerable glasses of liquor that poor Bruder had swallowed had helped to rob him of these, and so there was no power to resist.

Under her husband's improved finances, Mrs. Bruder had removed to comfortable lodgings in Harrison Street, and these she determined to keep if possible, dreading for the sake of her children the influences of a crowded tenement house. Dennis stood by her, a stanch and helpful friend; Ernst was earning a good little sum weekly, and by her needle and washtub the patient woman continued the hard battle of life with fair prospects of success.

Dennis's studio was on the south side, at the top of a tall building overlooking the lake. Even before the early summer sun rose above the shining waves he was at his easel, and so accomplished what is a fair day's work before many of his profession had left their beds. Though he worked hard and long, he still worked judiciously. Bent upon accomplishing what was almost impossible within the limited time remaining, he determined that, with all his labor, Dr. Arten should never charge him with suicidal tendencies again. Therefore he trained himself mentally and morally for his struggle as the athlete trains himself physically.

He believed in the truth, too little recognized among brain-workers, that men can develop themselves into splendid mental conditions, wherein they can accomplish almost double their ordinary amount of labor.

The year allotted to the competitors for the prize to be given in October was all too short for such a work as he had attempted, and through his own, his mother's, and Mr. Bruder's illness, he had lost a third of the time, but in the careful and skilful manner indicated he was trying to make it up. He had a long conversation with shrewd old Dr. Arten, who began to take a decided interest in him. He also read several books on hygiene. Thus he worked under the guidance of reason, science, Christian principle, instead of mere impulse, as is too often the case with genius.

In the absorption of his task he withdrew utterly from society, and, with the exception of his mission class, Christian worship on the Sabbath, and attendance on a little prayer-meeting in a neglected quarter during the week, he permitted no other demands upon his time and thoughts.

His pictures had sold for sufficient to provide for his sisters and enable him to live, with close economy, till after the prize was given, and then, if he did not gain it (of which he was not at all sure), his painting would sell for enough to meet future needs.

And so we leave him for a time earnestly at work. He was like a ship that had been driven hither and thither, tempest-tossed and in danger. At last, under a clear sky and in smooth water, it finds its true bearings, and steadily pursues its homeward voyage.

The Christine whom he had first learned to love in happy unconsciousness, while they arranged the store together, became a glorified, artistic ideal. The Christine whom he had learned to know as false and heartless was now to him a strange, fascinating, unwomanly creature, beautiful only as the Sirens were beautiful, that he might wreck himself body and soul before her unpitying eyes. He sought to banish all thought of her.

Christine returned about midsummer. She was compelled to note, as she neared her native city, that of all the objects it contained Dennis Fleet was uppermost in her thoughts. She longed to go to the store and see him once more, even though it should be only at a distance, with not even the shadow of recognition between them. She condemned it all as folly, and worse than vain, but that made no difference to her heart, which would have its way.

Almost trembling with excitement she entered the Art Building the next day, and glanced around with a timidity that was in marked contrast to her usual cold and critical regard. But, as the reader knows, Dennis Fleet was not to be seen. From time to time she went again, but neither he nor Ernst appeared. She feared that for some reason he had gone, and determined to learn the truth. Throwing off the strange timidity and restraint that ever embarrassed her where he was concerned, she said to Mr. Schwartz one day: "I don't like the way that picture is hung. Where is Mr. Fleet? I believe he has charge of that department."

"Why, bless you! Miss Ludolph," replied Mr. Schwartz, with a look of surprise, "Mr. Ludolph discharged him over two months ago."

"Discharged him! what for?"

"For being away too much, I heard," said old Schwartz, with a shrug indicating that that might be the reason and might not.

Christine came to the store but rarely thereafter, for it had lost its chief element of interest. That evening she said to her father, "You have discharged Mr. Fleet?"

"Yes," was the brief answer.

"May I ask the reason?"

"He was away too much."

"That is not the real reason," she said, turning suddenly upon him. "Father, what is the use of treating me as a child? What is the use of trying to lock things up and keep them from me? I intend to go to Germany with you this fall, and that is sufficient."

With a courtly smile Mr. Ludolph replied, "And I have lived long enough, my daughter, to know that what people intend, and what they do are two very different things."

She flushed angrily and said: "It was most unjust to discharge him as you did. Do you not remember that he offered his mother's services as nurse when I was dreading the smallpox?"

"You are astonishingly grateful in this case," said her father, with a meaning that Christine understood too well; "but, if you will read the records of the Ludolph race, you will find that its representatives have often been compelled to do things somewhat arbitrarily. Since you have been gone, I have received letters announcing the death of my brother and his wife. I am now Baron Ludolph!"

But Christine was too angry and too deeply wounded to note this information, which at one time would have elated her beyond measure. She coldly said, "It is a pity that noblemen are compelled to aught but noble deeds"; and, with this parting arrow, she left him.

Even her father winced, and then with a heavy frown said, "It is well that this Yankee youth has vanished; still, the utmost vigilance is required."

Again he saw the treacherous maid and promised increased reward if she would be watchful, and inform him of every movement of Christine.

In the unobtrusive ways that her sensitive pride permitted, Christine tried to find out what had become of Dennis, but vainly. She offered her maid a large reward if she would discover him, but she had been promised a larger sum not to find him, and so did not. The impression was given that he had left the city, and Christine feared, with a sickening dread, that she would never see him again. But one evening Mr. Cornell stated a fact in a casual way that startled both Mr. and Miss Ludolph.

He was calling at their house, and they were discussing the coming exhibition of the pictures which would compete for the prize.

"By the way, your former clerk and porter is among the competitors; at least he entered the lists last spring, but I have lost sight of him since. I imagine he has given it up, and betaken himself to tasks more within the range of his ability."

The eyes of father and daughter met, but she turned to Mr. Cornell, and said, coolly, though with a face somewhat flushed, "And has Chicago so much artistic talent that a real genius has no chance here?"

"I was not aware that Mr. Fleet was a genius," answered Mr. Cornell.

"I think that he will satisfy you on that point, and that you will hear from him before the exhibition takes place."

Mr. Ludolph hastily changed the subject, but he had forebodings as to the future.

Christine went to her room, and thought for a long time; suddenly she arose, exclaiming, "He told me his story once on canvas; I will now tell him mine."

She at once stretched the canvas on a frame for a small picture, and placed it on an easel, that she might commence with dawn of day.

During the following weeks she worked scarcely less earnestly and patiently than Dennis. The door was locked when she painted, and before she left the studio the picture was hidden.

She meant to send it anonymously, so that not even her father should know its authorship. She hoped that Dennis would recognize it.

When she was in the street her eyes began to have an eager, wistful look, as if she was seeking some one. She often went to galleries, and other resorts of artists, but in vain, for she never met him, though at times the distance between them was less than between Evangeline and her lover, when she heard the dip of his oar in her dream. Though she knew that if she met him she would probably give not one encouraging glance, yet the instinct of her heart was just as strong.

Mr. Ludolph told the maid that she must find out what Christine was painting, and she tried to that degree that she wakened suspicion.

On one occasion Christine turned suddenly on her, and said: "What do you mean? If I find you false—if I have even good reason to suspect you—I will turn you into the street, though it be at midnight!"

And the maid learned, as did Mr. Ludolph, that she was not dealing with a child.

During Monday, October 2, Dennis was employed all the long day in giving the finishing touches to his picture. It was not worked up as finely as he could have wished; time did not permit this. But he had brought out his thought vividly, and his drawings were full of power. On the following Saturday the prize would be given.

In the evening he walked out for air and exercise. As he was passing one of the large hotels, he heard his name called. Turning, he saw on the steps, radiant with welcome, his old friend, Susie Winthrop. Her hand was on the arm of a tall gentleman, who seemed to have eyes for her only. But in her old impulsive way she ran down the steps, and gave Dennis a grasp of the hand that did his lonely heart good. Then, leading him to the scholarly-looking gentleman, who was gazing through his glasses in mild surprise, she said: "Professor Leonard, my husband, Mr. Fleet. This is the Dennis Fleet I have told you about so often."

"Oh-h," said the professor, in prolonged accents, while a genial light shone through his gold spectacles. "Mr. Fleet, we are old acquaintances, though we have never met before. If I were a jealous man, you are the only one I should fear."

"And we mean to make you wofully jealous to-night, for I intend to have Mr. Fleet dine with us and spend the evening. Wo, I will take no excuse, no denial. This infatuated man will do whatever I bid him, and he is a sort of Greek athlete. If you do not come right along I shall command him to lay violent hands on you and drag you ignominiously in."

Dennis was only too glad to accept, but merely wished to make a better toilet.

"I have just come from my studio," he said.

"And you wish to go and divest yourself of all artistic flavor and become commonplace. Do you imagine I will permit it? No! so march in as my captive. Who ever heard of disputing the will of a bride? This man" (pointing up to the tall professor) "never dreams of it."

Dennis learned that she was on her wedding trip, and saw that she was happily married, and proud of her professor, as he of her.

With feminine tact she drew his story from him, and yet it was but a meagre, partial story, like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out, for he tried to be wholly silent on his love and disappointment. But in no respect did he deceive Mrs. Leonard. Her husband went away for a little time. In his absence she asked, abruptly, "Have you seen Miss Ludolph lately?"

"No!" said Dennis, with a tell-tale flush. Seeing her look of sympathy, and knowing her to be such a true friend, the impulsive young man gave his confidence almost before he knew it. She was just the one to inspire trust, and he was very lonely, having had no one to whom he could speak his deeper feelings since his mother died.

"Miss Ludolph wronged me in a way that a man finds it hard to forget or forgive," he said, in a low, bitter tone; "but I should have tried to do both had she not treated my mother most inhumanly;" and he told his story over again with Hamlet in.

Mrs. Leonard listened with breathless interest, and then said: "She is a strange girl, and that plan of making you her unconscious model is just like her, though it was both cruel and wicked. And yet Mr. Fleet, with shame for my sex I admit it, how many would have flirted with you to the same degree from mere vanity and love of excitement! I have seen Miss Ludolph, and I cannot understand her. We are no longer the friends we once were, but I cannot think her utterly heartless. She is bent upon becoming a great artist at any cost, and I sometimes think she would sacrifice herself as readily as any one else for this purpose. She looks to me as if she had suffered, and she has lost much of her old haughty, cold manner, save when something calls it out. Even in the drawing-room she was abstracted, as if her thoughts were far away. You are a man of honor, and it is due that you should know the following facts. Indeed I do not think that they are a secret any longer, and at any rate they will soon be known. If Mr. Ludolph were in Germany he would be a noble. It is his intention to go there this fall, and take his wealth and Christine with him, and assert his ancestral titles and position. Christine could not marry in this land without incurring her father's curse, and I think she has no disposition to do that—her ambition is fully in accord with his."

"Yes," said Dennis, bitterly, "and where other women have hearts, she has ambition only."

The professor returned and the subject was dropped.

Dennis said, on taking his leave: "I did not expect to show any one my picture till it was placed on exhibition with the others, but, if you care to see it, you may to-morrow. Perhaps you can make some suggestions that will help me."

They eagerly accepted the invitation, and came the following morning. Dennis watched them with much solicitude. When once they understood his thought, their delight and admiration knew no bounds. The professor turned and stared at him as if he were an entirely different person from the unpretending youth who had been introduced on the preceding evening.

"If you do not get the prize," he said, sententiously, "you have a great deal of artistic talent in Chicago."

"'A Daniel come to judgment!'" cried his wife.



CHAPTER XL

SUGGESTIVE PICTURES AND A PRIZE

At last the day of the exhibition dawned. Dennis had sent his picture, directed to Mr. Cornell, with his own name in an envelope nailed to its back. No one was to know who the artists were till after the decision was given. Christine had sent hers also, but no name whatever was in the envelope attached to it.

At an early hour, the doors were thrown open for all who chose to come. The committee of critics had ample time given them for their decision, and at one o'clock this was to be announced.

Although Dennis went rather early, he found that Christine was there before him. She stood with Professor and Mrs. Leonard, Mr. Cornell, and her father, before his picture, fie could only see her side face, and she was glancing from the printed explanation in the catalogue to the painting. Mrs. Leonard was also at her side, seeing to it that no point was unnoted. Christine's manner betrayed intense interest and excitement, and with cause, for again Dennis had spoken to her deepest soul in the language she best loved and understood.

As before, she saw two emblematic pictures within one frame merely separated by a plain band of gold.

The first presented a chateau of almost palatial proportions, heavy, ornate, but stiff and quite devoid of beauty. It appeared to be the abode of wealth and ancestral greatness.

Everything about the place indicated lavish expenditure. The walks and trees were straight and formal, the flowers that bloomed here and there, large and gaudy. A parrot hung in a gilded cage against a column of the piazza. No wild songsters fluttered in the trees, or were on the wing. Hills shut the place in and gave it a narrow, restricted appearance, and the sky overhead was hard and brazen. On the lawn stood a graceful mountain ash, and beneath it were two figures. The first was that of a man, and evidently the master of the place. His appearance and manner chiefly indicated pride, haughtiness, and also sensuality. He had broken a spray from the ash-tree, and with a condescending air was in the act of handing it to a lady, in the portraiture of whom Dennis had truly displayed great skill. She was very beautiful, and yet there was nothing good or noble in her face. Her proud features showed mingled shame and reluctance to receive the gift in the manner it was bestowed, and yet she was receiving it. The significance of the mountain ash is "Grandeur." The whole scene was the portrayal, in the beautiful language of art, of a worldly, ambitious marriage, where the man seeks mere beauty, and the woman wealth and position, love having no existence.

It possessed an eloquence that Christine could not resist, and she fairly loathed the alliance she knew her father would expect her to make after their arrival in Germany, though once she had looked forward to it with eagerness as the stepping-stone to her highest ambition.

The second picture was a beautiful contrast. Instead of the brazen glare of the first, the air was full of glimmering lights and shades, and the sky of a deep transparent blue. Far up a mountain side, on an overhanging cliff, grew the same graceful ash-tree, but its branches were entwined with vines of the passion-flower that hung around in slender streamers. On a jutting rock, with precarious footing, stood a young man reaching up to grasp a branch, his glance bold and hopeful, and his whole manner full of daring and power. He had evidently had a hard climb to reach his present position; his hat was gone; his dress was light and simple and adapted to the severest effort.

But the chief figure in this picture also was that of a young girl who stood near, her right hand clasping his left, and steadying and sustaining him in his perilous footing. The wind was in her golden hair, and swept to one side her light, airy costume. Her pure, noble face was lilted up toward him, rather than toward the spray he sought to grasp, and an eager, happy light shone from her eyes. She had evidently climbed with him to their present vantage-point, and now her little hand secured and strengthened him as he sought to grasp, for her, success and prosperity joined with unselfish love. The graceful wind-flowers tossed their delicate blossoms around their feet, and above them an eagle wheeled in its majestic flight.

Below and opposite them on a breezy hillside stood a modern villa, as tasteful in its architecture as the former had been stiff and heavy. A fountain played upon the lawn, and behind it a cascade broke into silver spray and mist. High above this beautiful earthly home, in the clear, pure air rose a palace-like structure in shadowy, golden outline, indicating that after the dwelling-place of time came the grander, the perfect mansion above.

Christine looked till her eyes were blinded with tears, and then dropped her veil. In the features of the lady in each case she had not failed to trace a faint likeness, sufficient to make it clear to herself. She said in a low, plaintive tone, with quivering lips, "Mr. Fleet painted that picture."

"Yes," said Mrs. Leonard, looking at her with no little wonder and perplexity.

By a great effort Christine recovered herself and said, "You know how deeply fine paintings always affect me."

Dennis of course knew nothing of Christine's feelings. He could only see that his picture had produced a profound effect on her, and that she had eyes for nothing else. But he overheard Mr. Cornell say, "It is indeed a remarkable painting"

"Do you know its author?" asked Mr. Ludolph, with a heavy frown.

"No, I do not. It is still a mystery"

"Will it take the prize, do you think?"

"I am not at liberty to give an opinion as yet," replied Mr. Cornell, with a smile. "There is another picture here, almost if not quite as fine, though much smaller and simpler;" and he took Mr. Ludolph off to show him that.

Dennis was now recognized by Mrs. Leonard and her husband, who came forward and greeted him cordially, and they started on a tour of the gallery together. Though his heart beat fast, he completely ignored Christine's presence, and responded coldly to Mr. Ludolph's slight bow.

Christine, on being aware of his presence, furtively devoured him with her eyes. The refining influences of his life were evident in his face and bearing, and she realized her ideal of what a man ought to be. Eagerly she watched till he should discover her painting where it hung opposite his own, and at last she was amply rewarded for all her toil. He stopped suddenly and stood as if spellbound.

The picture was very simple, and few accessories entered into it. Upon a barren rock of an island stood a woman gazing far out at sea, where in the distance a ship was sailing away. Though every part had been worked up with exquisite finish, the whole force and power of the painting lay in the expression of the woman's face, which was an indescribable mingling of longing and despair. Here also Christine had traced a faint resemblance to herself, though the woman was middle-aged and haggard, with famine in her cheeks.

As Dennis looked and wondered, the thought flashed into his mind, "Could she have painted that?" He turned suddenly toward her and was convinced that she had done so; for she was looking at him with something of the same expression, or at least he fancied so. She blushed deeply and turned hastily away. He was greatly agitated, but in view of the eyes that were upon him controlled himself and remained outwardly calm.

Mr. Ludolph also was convinced that his daughter had painted the picture, and he frowned more heavily than before. He turned a dark look on her, and found her regarding Dennis in a manner that caused him to grind his teeth with rage. But he could only sit down and watch the course of events.

The people were now thronging in. The gentlemen who made up the prize, with their committee of award, of which Mr. Cornell was chairman, were also present. Most critically they examined each picture till at last their choice narrowed down to the two paintings above described. But it soon became evident that their choice would fall upon the larger one, and Dennis saw that he was to be the victor. To his surprise Christine seemed utterly indifferent as to the result of their decision. He could not know that the prize had no place in her thoughts when she painted her picture. She had found her reward in its effect on him.

At one o'clock Mr. Cornell came forward and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, and especially do I address that group of liberal citizens who are so generously seeking to encourage art in our great and prosperous city, it gives me pleasure to inform you that your munificence has brought forth rich fruit, for here are many paintings that would do credit to any gallery. We hesitated a little time between two very superior pictures, but at last we have decided that the larger one is worthy of the prize. The smaller picture is one of great merit; its treatment is unusually fine, though the subject is not new.

"The two emblematic pictures in some parts show crude and hasty work; indeed some minor parts are quite unfinished. The artist evidently has not had sufficient time. But the leading features are well wrought out, and the power and originality of the entire effort so impress us that, as I have said, we render our decision in its favor. That all may know our verdict to be fair, we state on our honor that we do not know by whom a single painting present was executed. Dr. Arten, as the largest contributor toward the prize, you are appointed to bestow it. On the back of the picture you will find an envelope containing the name of the artist, whom we all shall delight to honor."