an is no use?"

"I know of nothing useful in life," said he, "except what is beautiful
or creates beauty. You are beautiful, and ought to be most so on your
prairie."

"Am I really beautiful?" asked Catherine with much animation. "No one
ever told me so before."

This was coquetry. The young person had often heard of the fact, and,
even had she not, her glass told her of it several times a day. She
meant only that this was the first time the fact came home to her as a
new and exquisite sensation.

"You have the charm of the Colorado hills, and plains," said he. "But
you won't keep it here. You will become self-conscious, and
self-consciousness is worse than ugliness."

"Nonsense!" said Catherine boldly. "I know more art than you, if that is
your notion. Do you suppose girls are so savage in Denver as not to know
when they are pretty? Why, the birds are self-conscious! So are horses!
So are antelopes! I have seen them often showing off their beauties like
New York women, and they are never so pretty as then."

"Don't try it," said he. "If you do, I shall warn you. Tell me, do you
think my figure of St. Paul here self-conscious? I lie awake nights for
fear I have made him so."

Catherine looked long at the figure and then shook her head. "I could
tell you if it were a woman," she said. "All women are more or less
alike; but men are quite different, and even the silly ones may have
brains somewhere. How can I tell?"

"A grain of self-consciousness would spoil him," said Wharton.

"Then men must be very different from women," she replied. "I will give
you leave to paint me on every square inch of the church, walls and
roof, and defy you to spoil any charm you think I have, if you will only
not make me awkward or silly; and you may make me as self-conscious as
Esther's St. Cecilia there, only she calls it modesty."

Catherine was so pulled about and put to such practical uses in art as
to learn something by her own weary labors. A quick girl soon picks up
ideas when she hears clever men talking about matters which they
understand. Esther began to feel a little nervous. Catherine took so
kindly to every thing romantic that Wharton began to get power over her.
He had a queer imagination of his own, which she could not understand,
but which had a sort of fascination for her. She ran errands for him,
and became a sort of celestial messenger about the church. As for
Wharton, he declared that she stood nearer nature th