Unsatisfied longing, disappointed motherhood, deep, deep things stirred only to be denied! Yes, the model had been a good one, but it was from her own soul the life things in that face had come. It brought them all back now--all those things she had put into it. A great wave of passion and yearning swept through her;--new questionings, sorrow touched with resentment, longing mingled with defiance. Why could not this have gone right with them? What it would have meant to Karl in these days!--sustained, comforted, kept strong. The pain of those first days was translated by the deeper understanding of these. Her eyes were very deep, about her mouth an infinite yearning as she asked some of those questions for which God had no answer. But there was something about the picture she did not like. She looked at it with a growing dissatisfaction. And then she saw what it was. The woman was sinking to melancholy. She bowed under the hand of fate. She did not know why, this night of all others, she should resent that. What did she want? What could she expect? She stirred restlessly under the dissatisfaction. It seemed too much fate's triumph to leave it like this. Not this surrender, but a little of the Spartan, a touch of sternness, a little defiance in the hunger, an understanding--that was it!--a submission in which there was the dignity of understanding. Ah--here it was!--a knowing that thousands had endured and must endure, but as an echo from the Stoics--"Well?" The idea fascinated her--swept through her with a strange, wild passion. She scarcely knew what she was doing, when, after a long time of looking at the picture, she began getting out her things. Her face had wholly changed. She too had now the understanding, stern, all-comprehending--"Well?"--for fate. She could work! That was the thing remained. She would not bow down under it and submit. She would work! She would erect something to stand for their love--something so great, so universal and eternal that it would make up for all taken away. She would crystallise their lives into something so big and supreme that Karl himself, feeling, understanding that which he could not see, would come at the end into all the satisfaction of the victor! Could she do greater things for him than that? She glowed under the idea. It filled, thrilled, intoxicated her. And she could do it! As she saw that a few master strokes were visualising her idea she came into greater consciousness of her power than she had ever had before.