There came an impulse to look on beauty that other minds had sent forth. She rose and walked, with her light, rhythmic swiftness, northward toward the Metropolitan. When she passed the turnstile there lacked less than an hour of closing time. She went at once toward the rooms where were the casts. There was hardly a moving figure besides herself; there were only the still, white giants. She entered an alcove where there was a seat drawn before a cast of the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici. She sat down and gazed upon Michael Angelo's Thinker. After a while her eyes moved to the great figures of Twilight and Dawn, and then, rising, she crossed to Guliano's Tomb and stood before Day and Night. Presently she left the alcove, and crossing by the models of the Parthenon and of Notre Dame came into the Hall of the Antique and into the presence of the great Venus. Here she stayed until a man came through the place and said it was closing time. In February she sent to the same monthly "The Mortal." It passed from hand to hand until in due time it reached the editor. He read it, then strolled into the assistant editor's room:--"New star in the sky." But before Hagar could hear from the monthly, another moment in her life was here. A week after she had mailed this story, she and Rachel were together one evening in the latter's room. It was pouring rain, and there would be no company. Supper was just over,--the Maines clung to supper,--and the children had not been put to bed. Nightgowned, they made excursions and alarms from their nursery into their mother's room and out again and in again. Then Rachel turned out the gas, and they all sat in the light of the coal fire, and first Rachel told a story, and then Betty told one, and then Hagar, and then Charley. They were all stories out of Mother Goose, so no one had to wait long for their turn. Then Hagar had to tell about Bouncing Bet and Creeping Charley, which was a continued story with wonderful adventures, an adventure a night. Then the clock struck eight with a leaden sound, and Mammy appeared in the nursery door. "You carry me!" cried Bouncing Bet, and "You carry me!" cried Creeping Charley. So Rachel took one and Hagar took the other, mounted them like papooses, and in the nursery shot each into the appropriate small, white bed. Back before the fire, with the lights still out, the two sat for a time in silence. Hagar had a story in mind. She was musing it out, seeing the figures come true in the lit hollows. Rachel had a habit of crooning to herself. She went on now with one of the children's rhymes:-- "Baa, baa, Black Sheep, Have you any wool?" "Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full-- One for my master and one for my dame, And one for the little boy that lives in the lane!" Hagar stirred, lifted her arms, and clasped her hands behind her head. "How the rain pours! The winter is nearly over. It has been a wonderful winter."