"You are very beautiful--my successor!" she murmured. For a time, she studied the warm, vivid tones of the painted features, then, with the same smile, devoid of bitterness, she went on talking to the other face. "I know you are my successor," she said, "because the enthusiasm painted into your face is not the enthusiasm of art alone--nor," she added slowly, "is it pity!" Then, she noticed that one corner of the canvas caught the light with the shimmer of wet paint. It was the corner where ordinarily an artist affixes his name. She rose and went to the heavy studio-easel, and looked again with her eyes close to the stretchers. The paint was evidently freshly applied to that corner of the canvas. To her peering gaze, it almost seemed that through the new coating of the background she could catch a faint underlying line of red, as though it had been a stroke in the letter of a name. Then, she noticed her father's palette lying on a chair near the easel, and the brushes were damp. The lake and Van Dyke brown and neutral-tint that had been squeezed from their tubes were mixed into a rich tone on the palette, which matched the background of the portrait. Sinking back in the chair, fatigued even by such a slight exertion, she heard her father's returning tread on the stairs. From the door, he saw her eyes on the picture, but true to his promise he remained silent, though, as he caught her gaze on the palette, his own eyes took on something of anxiety and foreboding. "Does he sign his pictures now?" she asked abruptly. "No. Why?" "It looked--almost," she said wearily, "as though the signature had been painted out there at the corner." For an instant, St. John eyed his daughter with keen intentness. "The canvas was scraped in shipping," he said, at last. "I touched up the spot where the paint was rubbed." For a time, both were silent. The father saw that two hectic spots glowed on the girl's bloodless cheeks, and that her eyes, fixed on the picture, wore a deeply wistful longing. He, too, knew that this picture was a declaration of love, that in her silence she was torturing herself with the thought that these other eyes had stirred the heart that had remained closed to her. He did not want to admit to her that this was not a genuine Marston; yet, he faltered a moment, and resolved that he could not, even for so necessary a deception, let her suffer. "That portrait, my child," he confessed slowly, "was not painted by--by him. It's by another artist, a lesser man, named Saxon." Into the deep-set eyes surged a look of incredulous, but vast, relief. The frail shoulders drew back from their shallow-chested sag, and the thin lips smiled. "Doesn't he sign his pictures, either?" she demanded, finally. For an instant, St. John hesitated awkwardly for an explanation.