She was persuaded with difficulty by her friends to go and look at it one morning. She knew not what shock came over her as her eyes encountered the figure of her own handiwork, to the finishing of which had gone so many thoughts, wishes, and aspirations. There he stood, confronting her as she placed herself before him, seeming to live and stand out from all the surrounding things. She met his patient, steady eyes, which asked her, ‘Do you know me in all this foreign crowd, so alien to me and to you? Do you not remember those still hours of solitude and striving in which you lived with me and made me what I am? When will you take me back to be with you again, since neither of us can be where we would--at home in Rome?’ A choking came in her throat as she thought of the shabby old studio--the hours of intense life, both of joy and of sorrow, and she turned abruptly away, while her friends walked round the figure, and exclaimed, and admired, and put the wonted questions to her, ‘Minna, how did you come to think of it? What put it into your head?’ ‘I could never have thought of such a thing if I had been crowned for it,’ and so on. When the slight mist which covered her eyes had cleared from them, and she could see clearly again, she took time to look round, and found herself in a kind of little _tribuna_, round which, in an inner circle, as it were, were disposed statues and busts, while on the walls hung pictures. She glanced round, and began to examine the latter; she found herself almost in front of one which soon arrested her attention. It represented a corner of the great church of Santa Maria-sopra-Minerva at Rome, and one of the little episodes which one constantly sees occurring in Roman churches--one half of the episode, at least, is common enough. A young girl, accompanied by a servant, drops an alms into the hand of a beggar. The beggar is an old woman, whose withered countenance lights up as she glances into the face of the girl. Just behind the old woman is the figure of a young man, whose eyes are fixed with a passion of admiration and entreaty upon the girl’s face, which, sweet and calm and cold, smiles upon the old woman, and does not even see him. No possibility of mistaking the meaning in those eyes, nor the prayer for notice and love in the entire attitude and look. There was an emotional quality in this picture which went far to triumph over a good many faults of colour and execution. As Minna looked at it, a strange feeling stole over her. The faces of the young man and the girl were not portraits, but there was in them a haunting likeness to two faces she had known, which likeness sent a thrill through her. Hastily turning over the leaves of her catalogue, she found the number and title of the picture, and a scarcely suppressed ‘Ah!’ broke from her lips. ‘The Two Mendicants--Hans Riemann.’