"Haven't I, though!" she answered, mischievously. "Not that it was much use, for I always repented and confessed; and now I have abandoned the practice to the best of my ability. It is horrid to feel you don't deserve the confidence that is placed in you, Bishop, isn't it?" "Ideala!" Claudia protested. The Bishop looked puzzled. "I can assure you I have suffered agonies of remorse because, in an idle moment, I deceived my cat--a big, comfortable creature, who used to come to me every day to be fed, and preferred to eat out of my hand. He was greedy, though, and snapped, and one day I offered him a piece of preserved ginger, and he dashed at it as usual, and swallowed it before he knew what it was. Then he just looked at me and walked away. He trusted me, and I had deceived him. It was an unpardonable breach of confidence, and I have always felt that I never could look that cat in the face again." The Bishop smiled and sighed at the little reminiscence. "I think you are right, though, in one way, Ideala," he presently observed. "The powers of Light and Darkness are certainly having a hard fight for it in our day; but we have every reason to hope. Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill." "And, granted that the popular literature of the day is corrupt," the young sculptor put in, "and that the standard of society is being yearly lowered by it, still there is Art----" "But there is so little of it," said Ideala; "I mean so little that elevates. Most of the subjects chosen are not worth painting; and what profit is there in contemplating a thing that is neither grand nor beautiful in itself, nor suggestive, by association, of anything that is grand or beautiful? The pictures one generally sees are not calculated to suggest anything to the minds that need suggestion most. The technical part may be good and gratifying to those who understand it, but that is the mere trade of the thing. We prefer to see it well done, of course, but if the canvas has nothing but the paint to recommend it, the artist might have saved himself the trouble of putting it on, for all the good it does or the pleasure it gives." "Oh, Ideala, do you know nothing of the charm of colour?" asked a lady who painted. "_I_ do," said Ideala, "but I may be supposed to have enjoyed exceptional advantages. And it is hardly charm we want to elevate us. There will always be enough in all conscience to appeal to the senses. But there is an absence even of charm." "Many a noble thought has been expressed in a coat of colour," said the lady.