Since that day Percival has spent almost all his time abroad, leading such a life as he pictured long ago, only the reality is fairer than the day-dream, because Judith shares it with him. Together they travel or linger as the fancy of the moment dictates. Percival does not own a square yard of the earth's surface, and therefore he is at liberty to wander over it as he will. He is conscious of a curious loneliness about Judith and himself. They have no child, no near relations: it seems as if they were freed from all ordinary ties and responsibilities. His vague aspirations are even less definite than of old; yet, though his life follows a wandering and uncertain track, fair flowers of kindliness, tolerance and courtesy spring up by that wayside. Judith and he do not so much draw closer day by day as find ever new similarity of thought and feeling already existing between them. His heart turns to her as to a haven of peace; all his possibilities of happiness are in her hands; he rests in the full assurance that neither deed nor word of hers can ever jar upon him; in his darker moods he thinks of her as clear, still sunlight, and he has no desire apart from her. Yet when he looks back he doubts whether his life can hold another moment so supreme in love and anguish as that moment when he looked into Sissy's eyes for the last time and knew himself forgiven. SOME ASPECTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART. The art of the present day succeeds to the art of past centuries not immediately nor by an insensible gradation. It is preceded by an interval of absolute deadness in matters artistic. Sixty years ago art in almost every branch was a sealed book to the majority of even well-educated persons, and contentedly contemplated by them as such. All love for it, with all knowledge of its history and all desire for its development, was for a generation or two confined to a few professed followers and a few devoted patrons, the mass of mankind thinking of it not at all. But slowly a revival came in the main centres of civilization--not much sooner in one than in another, though somewhat differently in each. In Germany we see it beginning with the famous Teutonic colony at Rome, reverent in spirit, cautious in method, severe in theory, restrained in style--culminating, on the one hand, in the academic pietism of Overbeck, on the other in the deliberate majesty of Cornelius. In France the new life begins with the successors of David, strenuous, impetuous, jealous and innovating, Ingres and outline waging deadly battle with color and Delacroix. In England architectural enthusiasm gave the first impulse, the "Gothic Revival" becoming the basis of all subsequent work.