your wall. Now,
on the other hand, take this picture." He indicated a small canvas to
the right of the bathing nymphs, representing a twilight landscape.

"Oh, that one," said Laura. "We bought that here in America, in New
York. It's by a Western artist. I never noticed it much, I'm afraid."

"But now look at it," said Corthell. "Don't you know that the artist
saw something more than trees and a pool and afterglow? He had that
feeling of night coming on, as he sat there before his sketching easel
on the edge of that little pool. He heard the frogs beginning to pipe,
I'm sure, and the touch of the night mist was on his hands. And he was
very lonely and even a little sad. In those deep shadows under the
trees he put something of himself, the gloom and the sadness that he
felt at the moment. And that little pool, still and black and
sombre--why, the whole thing is the tragedy of a life full of dark,
hidden secrets. And the little pool is a heart. No one can say how deep
it is, or what dreadful thing one would find at the bottom, or what
drowned hopes or what sunken ambitions. That little pool says one word
as plain as if it were whispered in the ear--despair. Oh, yes, I prefer
it to the nymphs."

"I am very much ashamed," returned Laura, "that I could not see it all
before for myself. But I see it now. It is better, of course. I shall
come in here often now and study it. Of all the rooms in our house this
is the one I like best. But, I am afraid, it has been more because of
the organ than of the pictures."

Corthell turned about.

"Oh, the grand, noble organ," he murmured. "I envy you this of all your
treasures. May I play for you? Something to compensate for the
dreadful, despairing little tarn of the picture."

"I should love to have you," she told him.

He asked permission to lower the lights, and stepping outside the door
an instant, pressed the buttons that extinguished all but a very few of
them. After he had done this he came back to the organ and detached the
self-playing "arrangement" without comment, and seated himself at the
console.

Laura lay back in a long chair close at hand. The moment was
propitious. The artist's profile silhouetted itself against the shade
of a light that burned at the side of the organ, and that gave light to
the keyboard. And on this keyboard, full in the reflection, lay his
long, slim hands. They were the only things that moved in the room, and
the chords and bars of Mendels