“Oh, it was a beautiful wedding--I was there!” said Sonia, in a breathless endeavor to come naturally into the talk. As she spoke she met Harold’s eyes, and thought that she discovered just a shade of surprise in them. He only bowed, however, in assent to her rather demonstrative expression of praise. Sonia felt at once that her attendance at any wedding, particularly that one, was a thing that grated on him. His presence there was, of course, a necessity; but the odious taste of her going, out of pure curiosity, as it would appear to him, to see this marriage, must add one more item to the evidence which was rolling up against her. She was experiencing what was new to her--a sensation of total inadequacy to the social demands of her surroundings. “Harold, do you think you can possibly stay for the opening of the Salon?” said Martha, presently, in another effort to make the conversation go. This was a topic which she thought Sonia should be interested in. Apparently she was right. “I’m going to exhibit a picture,” said Sonia, quickly. Sonia had thought only of recovering herself by talking naturally, and this speech, as well as the last one, she regretted bitterly the moment she had uttered it. Not only did it seem in bad taste to speak of her exhibiting, when Martha was so far removed from such an honor, but it might also make the impression that she thought that the fact might be an inducement for him to stay for the Salon. It was maddening to have him look at her again with polite interest, and express his congratulations upon a fact of which she now felt heartily ashamed. How he must despise her! What should she do? “I wonder,” said Martha, at this point, in her clear, low voice, “if Harold has ever seen that striking picture that hangs in your room, Sonia. It is Watts’s ‘Hope,’ Harold. Do you know it?” Harold answered that he did not, and Sonia’s sense of helpless misery increased as she perceived that Martha was going to describe it. She bit her tongue to keep from crying out as Martha proceeded to give the following description: “It is a woman’s figure lying on the globe in an attitude of fatigue and dejection. The scantily draped form is beautiful, but not youthful-looking, and the face, partly concealed by a bandage over the eyes, is also beautiful, but lined with care and sorrow. In her hands she holds an old lyre with every string broken except one. This one string, frayed and worn and lax, she is striking with her thin, weak fingers, and she is bending her dulled ears to try to catch the note. When Sonia first showed it to me, and said that it was one of her favorite pictures, I did not understand it. We have all been taught at Etienne’s such a fine contempt for English art that I was disposed to treat it lightly. I soon saw, however, the wonderful, tragic meaning in the picture, and I quite long to see the original.”