The difference between them was as wide as the contrast between a tender cooing dove which nestles in your bosom and a beautiful butterfly that flits and skims hither and thither in the sunshine. Miss Crawford was fond of her father, and proud of him after a fashion; but she had no power to appreciate the sublimity of his art, the grandeur of his triumphs. She admired him, and was pleased with his success because it had given him wealth and fashion. Alone in a desert that _other one_ would have rejoiced with him in the glory of his work, however unprofitable, however remote from the possibility of reward, because it was his, and because he loved it. There were times when Flo's frivolous criticisms jarred on the painter's ear, for there were tones in her voice which even yet reminded him too painfully of the lost one. He was an over-indulgent father, said people, who estimated a father's indulgence by the amount of a daughter's pocket-money; but it may be that he would have been less indulgent if he had loved his child better, or rather if she had been able to reach that inner sanctuary of his soul where the image of the dead reigned alone. * * * * * Lady Cecil felt a thrill of delight when the painter turned his easel and revealed his finished picture. Ah, wonderful power, given to a man in such fulness as it had been given to William Crawford once in two hundred years, rarest of all earthly gifts, the masterdom of colour, the power which makes the painter's hand second only to the hand of the Creator who bade Eve come forth out of the shadow of night, and revealed to awakening Adam the perfection of womanly loveliness. In the prison scene the painter had full scope for his wondrous power of colour. The light in the picture was subdued. Only through the open door of poor Gretchen's cell one saw a lurid glimmer of the coming day. In this open doorway lounged Mephistopheles, with a horrible smile upon his face, and his figure darkly defined against that low lurid glimmer. The light of the prison-lamp shone full on the faces of the lovers, and the sickly yellow light made a kind of aureola around Gretchen's golden head. While Cecil stood before the picture in rapt admiration, Miss Crawford laid down her brushes and came to look at her father's labour. The painter lounged against the wall opposite his easel, gazing dreamily at his completed work. Oh, butterflies of fashion, driving mail-phaetons or tooling teams of four-in-hand in the Lady's Mile, Sybarites and loiterers in pleasant drawing-rooms, loungers in clubs, and triflers with existence, lotus-eaters of every species, have any of _you_ ever known a joy so deep as this--the joy that drove Pygmalion mad, the intoxicating triumph of the creator who sees his work complete in all its beauty and perfection?