as it was for herself she did
it--nobody else saw her. She knelt there partly because
of a vague desire to taste the essence of the spring and
the garden and Rossetti at once, and partly because she
felt the romance of the foolish situation. She knew of
the shadow her hair made around her throat, and that her
eyes were glorious in the moonlight. Going back to bed,
she paused before the looking-glass and wafted a kiss,
as she blew the candle out, to the face she saw there.
It was such a pretty face, and so full of tire spirit
of. Rossetti and the moonlight, that she couldn't help
it. Then she slept, dreamlessly, comfortably, and late;
and in the morning she had never taken cold.

Philadelphia had pointed and sharpened all this. The
girl's training there had vitalized her brooding dreams
of producing what she worshipped, had given shape and
direction to her informal efforts, had concentrated them
upon charcoal and canvas. There was an enthusiasm for
work in the Institute, a canonization of names, a blazing
desire to imitate that tried hard to fan itself into
originality. Elfrida kindled at once, and felt that her
soul had lodged forever In her fingers, that art had
found for her, once for all, a sacred embodiment. She
spoke with subdued feeling of its other shapes; she was
at all points sympathetic; but she was no longer at all
points desirous. Her aim was taken. She would not write
novels or compose operas; she would paint. There was some
renunciation in it and some humility. The day she came
home, looking over a dainty sandalwood box full of early
verses, twice locked against her mother's eye, "The desire
of the moth for the star," she said to herself; but she
did not tear them up. That would have been brutal.

Elfrida wanted to put off opening the case that held her
year's work until next day. She quailed somewhat in
anticipation of her parents' criticisms as a matter of
fact; she would have preferred to postpone parrying them.
She acknowledged this to herself with a little irritation
that it should be so, but when her father insisted, chisel
in hand, she went down on her knees with charming
willingness to help him. Mrs. Bell took a seat on the
sofa and clasped her hands with the expression of one
who prepares for prayer.

One by one Mr. Leslie Bell drew out his daughter's studies
and copies, cutting their strings, clearing them of their
paper wrappings, and standing each separately against
the wall in his c