"But you saw I didn't know any better, and you never let me see that _you_ did. You must have thought highly of me, I can see that." He stooped and laid one of his hands on hers with a friendly, thanking pressure. "I saw plainly enough what you could do," she protested. He went to stand again before the despised canvas, playing upon it with humorous disparagement. "But if you see now," she said, "that it's so--if it seems so----" "Say the word--do!" "If it seems bad to you now, that's a good sign. It means that you've learned something about color. Suppose it had still seemed good." He took the thing off the easel. "If I've learned as much about color as I think this is bad--well there's only a little left for me to learn." "Now you will paint others that will seem faultless at the time and bad a year later. That's the penalty of growth, but it's the proof. Make your prayer to the god of painting: 'May everything I do seem bad when it's a year old!'" "I'll try to," he returned gravely. Then, "Let's put this out of sight quick, before Virginia sees it." "You didn't burn it," she asked, when he returned. "I should think not. I'd have to fight Ben if I burned that. Of course I didn't know any better when I gave it to him, any more than I knew about his songs. That's another thing you must have laughed at me for." He laughed himself as she looked up at him with puzzled inquiry, and went on to confess how he had sung Ben's choicest ballad at the Monastery. "Of course it's a funny song," he continued, as he returned to the drawing board, "but it isn't so very much funnier than a lot that aren't supposed to be funny at all. Come, now," he rallied her, "don't they all rub in the sadness, even the ones you might think serious? There must be a million songs about 'Dreaming,' 'I Dreamed that You Were with Me, Love!' and 'It was All a Dream!' and 'Could I but Recall that Day!' and 'Alas, It was not so to be!' and 'Must We, then, Part Forever!' Always crying about something! Always moaning 'if only' something or other. They're about as teary a lot as Ben's songs. I told Virginia last night I never wanted to hear another 'Could I but--' song; they're as bad as 'The Fatal Wedding.'"