As Dennis realized the truth, and remembered what he had said, his face was scarcely less full of pain than Christine's. He saw that her whole soul was bent on an imitation that none could detect, and that he had foiled her purpose. But Christine's wound was deeper than that. She had been told again, clearly and correctly, that the sphere of high, true art was beyond her reach. She felt that the verdict was true, and her own judgment confirmed every word Dennis uttered. But she had done her best; therefore her suffering was truly agony--the pain and despair at failure in the most cherished hope of life. There seemed a barrier which, from the very limitations of her being, she could not pass. She did not fail from the lack of taste, culture, or skill, but in that which was like a sixth sense--something she did not possess. Lacking the power to touch and move the heart, she knew she could never be a great artist. Abruptly and without a word she left the room and store, accompanied by the Winthrops. Dennis felt as if he could bite his tongue out, and Christine's face haunted him like a dreadful apparition. Wherever he turned he saw it so distorted by pain, and almost hate, that it scarcely seemed the same that had smiled on him as he entered at her invitation. "Truly God is against all this," groaned he, to himself; "and what I in my weakness could not do He has accomplished by this unlooked-for scene. She will now ever regard me with aversion." Dennis, like many another, thought he saw God's plan clearly from a mere glimpse of a part of it. He at once reached this miserable conclusion, and suffered as greatly as if it had been God's will, instead of his own imagination. To wait and trust is often the latest lesson we learn in life. Mr. Ludolph's guests, absorbed in the pictures, at first scarcely noticed the departure of the others. Christine, with consummate skill and care, kept her relationship to the picture unknown to all save the Winthrops, meaning not to acknowledge it unless she succeeded. But in Dennis's startled and pained face she saw that he had read her secret, and this fact also annoyed her much. "I should like to know the artist who copied this painting," said Mr. Cornell. "The artist is an amateur, and not willing to come before the public at present," said Mr. Ludolph, so decidedly that no further questions were asked. "I am much interested in that young clerk of yours," said Mr. French. "He seems to understand himself. It is so hard to find a good discriminating judge of pictures. Do you expect to keep him?" "Yes, I do," said Mr. Ludolph, with such emphasis that his rival in trade pressed that point also no further.