u, one fine tall young fellow with the
honest face and the laughing ways, but you have been shielded, and I
should not have done so. I should have let you grow from the start and
learn all things so soon as you could."

"I never knew my father," Lynn said, deeply moved, "but if I could
choose, I would choose you."

"So," said the Master, his eyes filling. Then their hands met in a long
clasp of understanding.

"Already I am the richer for it," Lynn went on, after a little. "I know
now what I did not know before."

The boy's face was still white, but the look of hopeless despair was
merged into something which foreshadowed ultimate acceptance. The Master
still held his hand.

"If you are to be an artist," he said, once more, "you must not be
afraid of life. You must welcome it to its utmost cross. You must take
the cold, the heat, the poverty, the hunger, the burning way through the
desert, the snow-clad steeps, the keen hurt, and the happiness--it is
all one, for it gives you knowledge. You must know all the pain of the
world, face to face, if you are to help those who bear it. Keen feelings
give you the great hurt, but also, in payment, the great joy. The
balance swings true. The Herr Doctor has told me this. He is most wise;
he understands."

"I see," answered Lynn. "I will never be afraid again."

"That," said the Master, with his face alight,--"that is mine son's true
courage. Take it with your head up, your teeth shut, and your heart
always believing. Fear nothing, and much will be given back to you,--is
it not so? Let life do all it can--you will never be crushed unless you
are willing that it should be so. Defeat comes only to those who invite
it."

"I see," said Lynn, again; "with all my heart I thank you."

He went away soon afterward, insensibly comforted. Overnight, he had
come into his heritage of pain, had lost the girl he loved, and in swift
restitution found comradeship with the Master.

That stately figure lingered long before his vision, grey and rugged,
yet with a certain graciousness--simple, kindly, and yet austere; one
who had accepted his sorrow, and, by some alchemy of the spirit,
transmuted it into universal compassion, to speak, through the Cremona,
to all who could understand.

XVII

"He Loves Her Still"

When Doctor Brinkerhoff came on Wednesday evening, he was surprised to
discover that Iris had gone away. "It was sudden, was it not?" he asked.

"It seemed so to us,