Dennis saw his power and proceeded rapidly, for he knew they might be interrupted at any moment; and so they would have been had anything less interesting than eating occupied the attention of others. "I saw in the picture what in your eyes and mine would be a fatal defect--the lack of life and true feeling--the lack of power to live. I did not know who painted it, but felt that any one who could paint as well as that, and yet leave out the soul, as it were, had not the power to put it in. No artist of such ability could willingly or ignorantly have permitted such a defect." Christine's eyes sank, their fire faded out, and her face had the pallor of one listening to her doom. This deeper feeling mastered the momentary resentment against the hand that was wounding her, and she forgot him, and all, in her pain and despair. In a low, earnest tone Dennis continued: "But since I have come to know who the artist is, since I have studied the picture more fully, and have taken the liberty of some observation"--Christine hung on his lips breathlessly, and Dennis spoke slowly, marking the effect of every word--"I have come to the decided belief that the lady who painted that picture can reach the sphere of true and highest art." The light that stole into Christine's face under his slow, emphatic words was like a rosy dawn in June; and the thought flashed through Dennis's mind, "If an earthly hope can so light up her face, what will be the effect of a heavenly one?" For a moment she sat as one entranced, looking at a picture far off in the future. His words had been so earnest and assured that they seemed reality. Suddenly she turned on him a look as grateful and happy as the former one had been full of pain and anger, and said: "Ah, do not deceive me, do not flatter. You cannot know the sweetness and power of the hope you are inspiring. To be disappointed again would be death. If you are trifling with me I will never forgive you," she added, in sudden harshness, her brow darkening. "Nor should I deserve to be forgiven if I deceived you in a matter that to you is so sacred." "But how--how am I to gain this magic power to make faces feel and live on canvas?" "You must believe. You yourself must feel." She looked at him with darkening face, and then in a sudden burst of passion said: "I don't believe; I can't feel. All this is mockery, after all."