"I know you have; and it was very untidy of you, my dearest. Once would have been enough to show that it belonged to you; but you weren't content with that: you scribbled all over every available space, until there was no room left even for advertisements; and now nobody else will ever be able to write another name upon it as long as I live." "I'm glad of that; I wouldn't have anybody else's name upon it for anything. And I'm glad that you like me just as I am, and don't want me to be different." "Heaven forbid!" "But still I was horrid to you once, Chris, however you may try to gloss it over. My dear, my dear, I don't know how I ever could have been unkind to you; but I was." "Never mind, sweetheart; it is ancient history now, and who bothers about ancient history? Did you ever meet anybody who fretted over the overthrow of Carthage, or made a trouble of the siege of Troy?" "No," Elisabeth truthfully replied; "and I'm really nice to you now, whatever I may have been before. Don't you think I am?" "I should just think you are, Betty; a thousand times nicer than I deserve, and I am becoming most horribly conceited in consequence." "And, after all, I agree with the prophet Ezekiel that if people are nice at the end, it doesn't much matter how disagreeable they have been in the meantime. He doesn't put it quite in that way, but the sentiment is the same. I suit you down to the ground now, don't I, Chris?" "You do, my darling; and up to the sky, and beyond." And Christopher drew her still closer to him and kissed her. After a minute's silence Elisabeth whispered-- "When one is as divinely happy as this, isn't it difficult to realize that the earth will ever be earthy again, and the butter turnipy, and things like that? Yet they will be." "But never quite as earthy or quite as turnipy as they were before; that's just the difference." After playing for a few minutes with Christopher's watch-chain, Elisabeth suddenly remarked-- "You never really appreciated my pictures, Chris. You never did me justice as an artist, though you did me far more than justice as a woman. Why was that?" "Didn't I? I'm sorry. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that you are right. I was always intensely interested in your pictures because they were yours, quite apart from their own undoubted merits." "That was just it; you admired my pictures because they were painted by me, while you really ought to have admired me because I had painted the pictures." A look of amusement stole over Christopher's face. "Then I fell short of your requirements, dear heart; for, as far as you and your works were concerned, I certainly never committed the sin of worshipping the creature rather than the creator." "But there was a time when I wanted you to do so."