w
noting for the first time. "You have put in a butterfly," he added,
returning to his inspection; "that is--if it isn't a bird? There are no
butterflies here now; has there been one here?"

"There should have been; it's the very place for them," Lucian declared.

"I don't think, Lucian, that there's any certainty about that; I myself
have often searched for them in places where it seemed to me they
_should_ be; they are never there."

Garda again gave way to merriment, hiding it and her face on Margaret's
shoulder.

"Hasn't your sky rather too vivid a blue, Lucian?" Mr. Moore went on,
his face again close to the picture.

"Well, sir, that's as we see it; _I_ see that color in the sky, you
know."

"How can you see it if it is not there?" demanded his relative, with his
temperate dwelling upon his point. And he transferred his gaze from the
sketch to the young man.

"But it _is_ there for me. It's the old question of the two kinds of
truth."

"There are not two kinds, I think, Lucian," responded the clergyman, and
this time he spoke with decision.

"There are two ways of seeing it, then. We state or believe a thing as
we see it, and we do not all see alike; you see the hues of a sunset in
one way, Turner saw them in another; he painted certain skies, and
people said there were no such skies; but Turner saw them."

"The fault was still there, Lucian; it was in his vision."

"Or take another instance," continued Spenser. "A man has a wife whom he
loves. She has grown old and faded, there is no trace of beauty left;
but he still sees her as she was; to him she does not merely seem
beautiful, she is beautiful."

The eyes of Garda and Margaret met, one of those rapid exchanges of a
mutual comprehension which are always passing between women unless they
happen to be open enemies; even then they are sometimes forced to
suspend hostilities long enough for one of these quick passwords of
intelligence;--men are so slow! The mutual thought of the two women now
was--Mrs. Penelope. Certainly she was old and faded, and very certainly
also her husband regarded her as much of a Venus as it was proper for a
clerical household to possess. Their entertainment continued as they saw
that the clergyman made no personal application of Spenser's comparison,
but merely considered the illustration rather an immoral one.

As if to change the subject, this good man now demanded, in his equable,
unresonant voice, "How do you return