err Doctor, and tell me a little about my foster child, Leah."

"I tell you, Madame? Nay, it would greatly interest me to learn from
_you_ something about the childhood and early education of my pupil,
who seems to be somewhat reserved."

A sorrowful smile flitted over the lady's pleasant, cheerful face. "If
I could answer that question satisfactorily, you would hardly be
sitting beside me now," she replied. "But excuse me a moment, I'm
wanted in the other room."

One of the seamstresses had appeared in the doorway. Frau Valentin left
Edwin, and he heard her in the next room giving orders and directions
in her clear, positive manner. Then she returned.

"I always have my hands full," she began. "As I unfortunately no longer
have any household cares, I willingly take as much of the work of the
different clubs and societies to which I belong, as others wish to
discard. Ah! Doctor, it affords a great deal of pleasure to have a
crowd of deaf and dumb or neglected or orphaned children thank you for
their warm, new clothes; yet a single child of one's own, who need not
even be deaf and dumb or neglected, or even specially grateful, would
bestow a very different kind of happiness. A substitute is never the
thing itself. And that's the very reason why it makes me so sad, that
the only child I could love almost as my own, avoids me so strangely;
she's not cold or ungrateful, but I learn nothing about the best things
that may be in her nature, and cannot impart the best of mine, since
she does not know how to receive them."

"Are you speaking of my pupil?"

The Frau Professorin did not answer immediately; she sat in silence
gazing into vacancy, with her pretty white hands folded in her lap.

"No one has ever caused me so much trouble," she continued, "and
yet she has so much amiability, goodness, unselfishness, and
independence. But that's just it, the one thing needful, the one thing
lacking--you're a philosopher, my dear Doctor, but I hope not one of
those whose knowledge has deprived them of faith. And this strange
girl--it is not the pride of superior knowledge that makes her
unbelieving; no one has a more modest opinion of her own acquirements.
But it's in the blood. You ought to have known her mother, whose
character she has inherited, trait for trait. Nothing has ever been
more mysterious to me, than how my old friend, the artist, who has such
a living need of God, could be so happy with this woman, who made no
sec