Martin Gray attended her to the carriage that stood in waiting, but Alice the songstress did not look upon him till she gave him her hand in parting, when he saw her face, then, the artist knew he had not been deceived; she was pale as death. A few months afterward, came from a city far to the South, a letter to our _hero_, its contents were a five hundred dollar note, and these words: “The child for whose education you so generously provided when both she and yourself were poor and unknown, would fain convince you that with increase of years, and fortune, and happiness, she has not forgotten—that she is not ungrateful. All the good that has fallen to her in this life she is glad and proud to trace directly to you, to that one act of well-timed charity. May the God of Heaven for ever bless you. The ‘Sunrise’ and the ‘Noonday’ of your life you have made unspeakably glorious, may the night be without a cloud, and complete in its magnificence!” It required no shrewd _guesser_ to determine for Martin Gray the author of this brief note. The cities of the South were at that very moment vieing with each other in lauding the Northern songsters, and the queen of beauty and of song, the lady “Alice”—and the artist rejoiced in her brilliant success, and waited with impatience till he should see and speak with her again. In the years when honors thickly clustered around his brow, when Fortune had laid many of her choicest gifts at his feet, there was yet one thing wanting to complete his happiness. There were few homes on earth so beautiful as his, and his wife and children (for Martin in course of time became an old man,) were all that the heart of man could desire. There were no lines betokening care, or a fierce strife with the world, on the artist’s handsome face. He had labored, and that constantly, it is true, but his had not been a wearying toil, rather such as had been intensely satisfying. The visions of beauty with which he mentally surrounded himself; had never been frightened away by rough and harsh experience—to him even as in his youth, “all things beautiful were what they seemed!” Many enchanting, perfect works had gone forth from the rooms of Martin Gray into the world, but there were two original ones for which he rejected every offer, however extravagant. Copies and engravings of them had been given to the public, but the canvas on which his fingers worked while his eyes were gazing on the loveliest and most perfect specimens of beauty to his mind conceivable, were precious beyond all price to him. The series had not been completed, for Martin Gray had never seen a human being fearfully beautiful, and irrevocably fallen, whereby to represent the “Night.” And as years passed on, his heart more earnestly and continually hoped that he never might.