She turned down the corridor leading to the room where she would find the special exhibit. She stopped before many of the pictures--reverting to that joy of the spirit in dominance. There was exultation, almost rapture, in this quick, firm rush of understanding; deep joy in just knowing the good from the bad. But when she reached the pictures she had come to see it was different. She walked to the middle of the room, and in one slow sweep of glance, punctuated with long pauses, took them in. And she responded to them with a warm, glad rush of tears. They fell upon her artist's soul as the very lovely rain upon the thirsty meadow. They drew her to them as the mother the homesick child, and like the homesick child, back at last after weary days, she knew only that she had come home. In this first overflowing moment there was no thought of colour--brush work--this or that triumphant audacity; it was a coming to her own, a home-coming of the spirit--the heart's passionate thankfulness, the heart's response. A few minutes of reverent pause, a high delight, deep response, and then--the inevitable. Clear as a bell upon the midnight air was that call from soul to kindred soul. Assurance and longing and demand possessed her beyond all power to stay. The work she stood before now called to her as naturally and inevitably as the bird to its mate, as undeniably as the sea to the river, as potently as spring calls upon earth for its own, as autumn calls to summer for harvest time. It frightened her. It seemed something within her over which she had no control. It surged through her as far beyond all reason as the tides of the sea are beyond the hand of man. It was procreative power demanding fulfillment as the child ready for birth demands that it be born. She was conscious of some one's having come into the room. That her face might not be seen she turned away and sat down before one of the pictures. She was quivering so passionately that it seemed almost impossible to hold herself within command. The girl who had come in was moving restlessly from one picture to another; at last she walked over and sat down on the seat by Ernestine. "I think I like this one best," she said, abruptly, nodding to the picture before them. Ernestine nodded in reply. She was not sure what would happen were she to speak. The girl she supposed to be one of the students there. "I would give anything in the world--just anything in the world--if I could do it too!" At the passion of that she turned quickly and looked at the girl. In spite of the real feeling of her tone a fretful look was predominant in her face. "Do you--work hard?" she asked, merely to relieve the pause. "Work--yes; but mere work won't do it. I can't do anything like this,"--it was in bitterness she said it. "Very few can, you know," murmured Ernestine. "Yes--but I want to! I don't care anything about life--I don't care anything about anything--if I can't paint!"