it. I get their praise, and I get their money, and I am grateful for it. I am grateful to you, my dear friend, for it - for it is to you that I owe it all; but it would be ten times more grateful to me to hear once from your lips that I had done good work." and black guardians, and the marbles and "The praise of fools!" she cried plaster figures were ghostly. The men bitterly. "Oh, George, I am so sick of who worked on the marble had gone home, and the measuring-bow and the chisels were laid aside; but Mrs. Palgrave's fingers still flew feverishly over the shaping mass of clay before her, as if she feared to lose a moment of the remaining daylight. George Heaton stood near her, watching her with eyes of grave affection, as she worked. The dark braids of her hair showed few lines of silver where the small widow's cap did not cover them. Her cheeks were still aglow with the light of young "Florence, you surprise me so much! health, and her beautiful dark eyes I had always thought that you were with the fire of eager purpose. George pleased, satisfied, with your success." Heaton, with his strongly cut, com- Again my success! Oh, George, posed face and grizzled beard, looked no. I have kept it so long to myself, nearly a score of years her senior, for I felt it ungrateful to you to comthough he was so but by half that num- plain, owing everything, as I do, to ber. you. But it withers me with self-con ""But you have. I tell you now, always. You do do good work.” "Oh, good work, yes - good in its way, I suppose; but great work, never. Can I never do great work?" "You are clever," he said at length tempt when these people praise me admiringly. "Clever!” she echoed, and a note that was almost a cry of pain sounded in her voice. "Clever! What is it to be clever? A monkey is that." She laid down her modelling-tool, and with tears standing in her dark, passionate eyes looked up at him. For him, he was so greatly surprised at the effect upon her of his remark that he was unable to reply for a mo those who know nothing; while you! —yes, you praise - you praise my cleverness. Heaton was sore put to it, but his loyalty to her and his own best self forbade him to delude with a lie the woman he loved. "Shall I never do anything great? she asked, as he was silentand gazed into his eyes, as a prisoner into the eyes of his judge. can - one, 66 "he said tenderly, Florence," you, a sculptor and a woman therefore, who looks sometimes in her glass ask me this question seriously? Or, rather, can your glass not answer that question for you? God gives but very few of us so many gifts as he has given you. You have all the quickness of apprehension, all the manual dexterity, for a great artist, besides all your social and personal gifts. But this great creative faculty - look in your glass and ask it-does that consist with the quickness which every line and feature of your face shows so vividly, and which makes its charm? Do you not know that creation resides in those slow rounded forms which lack the qualities which light your face? You have the love, the instinct, the appreciation, and the manipulation; but the creation How few have | sweet, strong nature, loving his mother ever had it! Above all, how few with all his heart, and with a deeply of your sex-in its highest sense! rooted faith and pride in her genius. Sappho, perhaps, alone-and she is little more to us than a myth. Forgive me, dear, if I pain you. But you wanted the truth, did you not ?” FOR a whole week Mrs. Palgrave did not come to the studio. The workmen who chipped at the marble had never known her so long away. But they were quite competent to progress with their work in her absence, and gave themselves the explanation that her boy had just returned from Eton for his holidays. The intensity of her affection for this boy sometimes almost frightened her. Her fierce pagan love of his father seemed to have burnt itself down into the purer but scarcely less deep maternal affection. In the boy she saw all the lovableness of her husband's nature, but (yet, at least) none of his vices. Gerald resembled his father rather than his mother, in face as in disposition, with feelings slumbering deep and hot under a calm surface. She had watched the boy grow in mental and physical stature with something of the delight, ten times intensified, of her pleasure in her artistic productions. Her pride in him was so great that she felt that all the best of her own being was wrapped in him, and she feared lest God should punish her for her too great love by taking him from her, as he had taken her husband. Gerald had been home about a fortnight when next George Heaton called at the studio. Mrs. Palgrave met Heaton with slight embarrassment in her greeting. "Forgive me, dear old friend," she whispered to him, "for the manner of our last parting.' "" His brown cheek flushed at her words, and the pressure of his hand spoke the fulness of his pardon. Then he turned to Gerald. "What!" he exclaimed, as the boy came to him with hands white with clay. "Have you turned sculptor too?" Gerald shook his head and laughed. "I am afraid he is not exactly what we should call artistic, are you, Gerald ?" his mother said, joining in his laugh. "Not much. It's jolly stuff to muddle with, though." 66 Heaton examined Mrs. Palgrave's work, and spoke encouragingly of its progress since he had last seen it. Then, as she resumed it, he strolled across the studio to watch the marble work. In so doing he stopped before the turntable at which Gerald was amusing himself, and gave an exclamation which made Mrs. Palgrave look up. "Did you do that?" he asked the boy. isn't it?" It's cricket, "Yes; Gunn, you know, 'cutting.' Oh, I say, you don't mean to say you don't know who Gunn is?" "No," Heaton said. to say I don't." "I'm ashamed "Why, he had the head average in Notts, all but Shrewsbury." "I didn't even know that Shrewsbury was in Notts," Heaton replied helplessly; "but tell me, did you do this thing all alone?" Mrs. Palgrave had laid down her modelling-tool, and was looking up, amazed at Heaton's tone. Any possible amusement at the colloquy between Heaton and the boy was lost in this a surprise. She knew so well his ordi But no such calamity befell, and now he had come back to her from school for a while, a tall, strong lad in his sixteenth year. All the fifteen years of his life she had done her best to spoil him, but still he was unspoiled "Yes, I did it, of course," "Gerald said, in answer to his question - he too looking up, surprised. Heaton was about to speak when his glance chanced to light on the face he knew and loved so well. He looked with a swift study at it, and the words he was about to speak died on his lips. He said nothing, and the boy went on with his cricketer. After watching him a few seconds longer Heaton went to the marble-workers. "I say, Mr. Heaton," Gerald called out directly, "you don't know, I suppose, whether Gunn generally wears two gloves or one? " 'Unfortunately," he said, "I have not the honor of Mr. Gunn's acquaint Have you 999 "Florence," Heaton said, coming across the studio to her as Gerald left it, "the boy has power. seen his work? it has 'go.' "No," she said, rising; "let me look at it. I have not seen it-only just glanced at it.” Her voice sounded strangely, both to Heaton and to herself. She, too, had found a new tone to-day. She looked at the boy's work in silence. แ "Well?" Heaton said. 66 Well," "Is it good, Why, there is life in it it moves," he answered, almost as if irritated by her lack of appreciation. "Don't you see? Look at the lines. Is there one you could alter, or that I could wish altered ?" Then Mrs. Palgrave laughed, a little forcedly. "What an absurd idea it is! The sort of thing a boy would choose to model. Ah, what Philistines they are!" There was something in her tone which jarred upon Heaton. He could not analyze it, but he was conscious of it; and when Gerald came back he took his leave, and went away whistling softly, which was his habitual aid to meditation. Ten days later he chanced to meet Gerald, and asked, "Well, how is the cricketer getting on?" 66 Oh," " the boy said, "I have not been working at him any more. Mother does not care for me being much in the studio. She says it distracts her from her work." IV. GERALD had been back at school some while when George Heaton, after a prolonged period of meditative whistling, made his way one day to Mrs. Palgrave's familiar studio. She was just finishing work for the day, and led him with her to the drawing-room and to five-o'clock tea. After a little talk there fell a pause; and then Heaton, with masculine abruptness, asked: "Have you settled definitely at all on Gerald's profession?" "I want him to choose his own line," Mrs. Palgrave said. "I believe he is inclined to the bar.". "Don't you think," Heaton said rather confusedly -"don't you think you ought to give him a chance ? ” "A chance ?" "At that," he explained shortly, nodding his head towards one of Mrs. Palgrave's own works standing in an alcove. "At sculpting!" she exclaimed, flushing a little and laughing. “Oh, I don't think he has the slightest turn that way." “Ah, I fancied he had," Heaton said dryly. "Oh, you mean that ridiculous cricketer! He has done nothing since." "He told me that you said—that he thought his presence in the studio distracted you.” "Did he ?" and again the slight flush | news of his progress, and all he was came to her cheek. "So it does," she added quickly. "It-yes, it distracts me." "There is no reason, is there," he asked gently," that he should not work in another studio? I mean, of course, if he learned he would have to learn under some one." "Of course,' coldly. doing and learning, she listened with a strong effort of self-repression and forced interest which the boy could not comprehend, and which made him secretly unhappy. They had been in such perfect sympathy, and yet in this, in which it would have seemed that his mother could have entered more fully ," Mrs. Palgrave replied than in any former interest of his young life, she would take no part ! "Oh, forgive me!" he said bitterly, But Heaton, whose praise was hard perfectly construing her tone. "Ito win, spoke highly of Gerald, expressknow I have no right—I know I am ing great hopes of him; and at length presuming! It is none of my busi-a day came on which it was made known to Mrs. Palgrave that Gerald No, no, no, you are not," she said, had a subject of his own imagining with quickly changing mood, speaking which Heaton thought him competent with impetuous vehemence "you are to enter upon, and that he was about to not. You are good, kind—everything set up the supports and work out the that is good, as you always are to me. plans in a studio of his own. Even Do will you, George?-you who then she would not come to see his have done so much — everything - for studio, nor did she wish the subject of me, will you do this too? Find out his first original work to be told to her. from the boy — try him - see if he "Do it all by yourself," she had said can be any good. And if he has any to Gerald, by way of putting him off. bent that way, arrange it- arrange it" Do not tell me a word about it until it for me. Will you? Arrange for hav-is finished; then on the day on which ing him taught, and so on. I cannot." you tell me it is finished, let me go to Florence, what do the studio and find it complete." ness; and I am impertinent 66 "You cannot ! you mean?" 66 'Oh, I cannot - don't ask me why! And yet I love him with all my heart and soul. Only, manage this for me as you ever have managed my difficulties and spare to ask me why I beg this of you." Gerald was, perforce, content with this, and pictured it to himself as his mother's pretty affectionate fancy. So the two worked away in their separate studios, Heaton coming often to Gerald's help, and speaking to him of the form of Phidias, the weight and She seemed strangely moved so dignity of Michael Angelo, the grace of deeply that the tears stood in her great | Praxiteles; and as Gerald drank in all dark eyes. Heaton had the tenderness the inspiration, his own conception to forbear from further questions, only took shape. By slow degrees, out of promising to do as she wished. But the shapelessness of the lump of clay, for days and weeks and months her it grew to the semblance of living mood was a source of wonder to him; form. It was with him day and night for even when Gerald's school-time was - had full possession of his dreams finished, and he was making arrange-even-was ever between him and all ments for the boy's instruction in the studio of a friend into all which Gerald entered with enthusiasm - Mrs. Palgrave would listen to no discussion of the plans. She had left all to Heaton, the good angel of her life, she said, with a short laugh, when the subject was mentioned between them. And when Gerald came to her with sights of sense. He worked upon it with a fury of creation which made him regardless of cold hands and feet and burning head, and of meal-times and bedtime. It seemed, vampire-like, to be sucking the life-blood from him while he gave it life, and he grew pale and hollow-eyed, but still he was sustained by the fever of creation. Once or twice his mother was moved to rea- | the day of battle before the peaceson with him on his excess of zeal; but strings were broken. She laid the though it was sweet to him to hear her book upon her knee, with her finger at speak on this subject, which sometimes the page which she was reading, and seemed to him to lie like a dead thing mused. And in her musing a queer between them, he could not obey. She, fancy came to her overwrought mind. too, was ill, though she would not ad- For it seemed to her that the key upon mit it torn by an inward struggle. the clock began to hum with a weird song of battle-even as the Wrath of Sigurd had done. The fancy grew At length there came a day when he burst into her studio with a flush of triumph on his face, and a look of fierce joy in his eyes. "It is done!" he cried. "It is finished! There is the key, mother. Go and see it before it gets dark." His He would not go with her. thoughts were in a turmoil as he rushed out again into the still, frosty evening. The setting sun hung like a great red ruby in the haze. He laughed to it as he sang it good-night. He was almost like a madman with delight. "I don't believe it I don't believe it," he kept saying to himself aloud," what Heaton tells me, that soon I shall grow dissatisfied with it and hate it. I think it is good, good, good. I believe in it." V. upon her as she fought against it, until the whole room was filled with the eerie, hateful humming. She threw down the book and covered her ears with her hands, but still the pagan song rang home to her with a force that grew and grew till it seemed to fill the world. She could resist its appeal no longer. She mounted quickly on the chair again, seized upon the key, and hurriedly putting on her things, went swiftly through the streets to Gerald's studio. At the door she stood with parted lips aud wide eyes agaze. "Ah," she exclaimed, with a snatching of the breath, her involuntary tribute of admiration to Gerald's beautiful work. But it was no loving admiration, rather it was of the nature of the tribute which the wife of Antony might have paid the fatal loveliness of Cleopatra. She gazed at the beautiful figure with an MRS. PALGRAVE remained standing as he had left her, with the key of the studio in her hand. The blood came hotly to her face as she gazed at the innocent little steel thing with the fas-intensity of admiration which grew and cination of horror which harassed Macbeth's vision of the dagger. Her pulses throbbed fiercely through her worn nervous frame, and her breath came thickly. Then moving like one in a dream, she climbed upon a chair, and, reaching to her full height, placed the key on the top of the old clock upon the mantelpiece. grew, and as her admiration grew her hate grew with it, until she could bear the sight of the thing no longer. Her mind was filled with pagan stories of the fierce vengeance of white-armed Signy and Brynhild. The blood rushed to her white, set face, the world grew red before her eyes, as when the berserk fit came upon the fighters of whom the saga told, and, with a cry that was fraught with insanity, she rushed like a mad thing upon the clay statue and fought it, dragging this way and that till it bowed itself and fell crashing to the floor. After the first cry she had Then she sat and began to read. fought in silence, but now, as her foe The book she was reading was one of fell, she gave another cry, strangely the old mythical sagas of the Scandi- different, which had in it more of a sob navian gods and heroes. She read of than of triumph, and falling forward, the wondrous sword of Sigurd · Odin's lay senseless, with her dark head pilgift, named the Wrath-which rang in lowed upon the white shoulder of clay. She sighed with relief, as one who has gained the victory in a hard fight with self, and threw herself in her armchair. "I dare not go and see it-I dare not," she murmured. "Especially alone." |