The sketch was a stroke of genius. It was a gracious, graceful girl, standing before the altar in her shimmering marriage robes, in actual flesh and blood, the great soul of a woman shining out from the violet eyes; the tender strength of the mouth, the resolute pose of the rounded chin, the russet gold of the hair—the whole lived and thought. One held one’s breath to catch the regular soft rhythm of hers, the very hand held out for its ring was palpitating with life. Naturally, the whole thing would have filled the soul of a dilettante with unutterable disgust, being as glaringly full of faults of detail as it well could be, but an artist with half an eye in his head would have put all these by in a place by themselves to be dealt with later, and would have gone mad over the truth that remained. It was the girl’s figure alone that made the picture; the man she stood before, was a mere blur of an idea, as were all the surroundings. Strange’s eyes, as he watched the woman, were brimful of a terrible joy, and of a more terrible sadness. As for Gwen, she fell to criticizing the details in a way that made Brydon’s flesh creep on his bones. “This is not the original sketch,” she said suddenly, stopping short in a sweeping criticism, “I wish you would show us that.” “It is very bad, you would like it still less than you do this.” “I might like it less as a picture, but, as a likeness, more, perhaps. Do show it to me.” The mere suspicion of entreaty she threw into her voice had never yet been rejected by any man, and soft-hearted Brydon was not going to be the first to run counter to her inclinations, so altogether against his will he pulled the sketch, about half the size of the other one, out from among a number of others, and put it in a good light where she could examine it at her ease. “Ah!” she said, “yes, that’s me, myself! What induced you to idealize? It was unjust towards me and dishonest to yourself.” “It was neither, it was prophetic,” said Strange in a low voice only audible to her. She glanced at him for a second with curling scornful lips. “Was it impossible then to make a decent picture of me as I look now?” she asked with a laugh, turning to Brydon, who was blushing furiously and wishing he could swallow himself. “No fellow living could do justice to you,” he blurted out painfully, “however you may look! but I was trying to paint a bride, and there in that first study you didn’t look just like one—from my own confounded fault, no doubt, so I tried the other.” “You have certainly succeeded in producing your bride,” she remarked with a curious, absent smile. To give her her due, she did not know how cruel her own pain made her. Her husband did, however; he winced as he put the two sketches side by side to compare them. He had the delicate sensitive respect of most strong men for feelings and other frail nervous things of that sort.