Graham looked at the speaker with doubting eyes. The words seemed to rouse an echo in his soul. They told him that he had served the altar of Art with Moloch sacrifices. Instead of the peaceful offerings of love, he had brought the anguish of two strong hearts to desecrate her temple. A dim perception of the truth entered his mind, and his grief for the lost picture was for a moment forgotten in a doubt which rose before him, never to be dismissed again until it was fully solved. A doubt of self, of his own judgment, of his own inflexible will. Millicent was gone! The six straight redwoods whispered the news one to another, and shook their tall tops sadly, while the sweet south wind sighed through their branches. Millicent was gone! and the roses that clasped and clung about her lattice died on the night she left them, and the vine bloomed no more, and bore for that season nothing but leaves. Millicent was gone! She had set wide the door of the golden prison where her love-birds had lived and sung so merrily through the long summer. But the little white creatures, prison-born, prison-bred, were too timid to venture out into the roomy forest, and had clung to the only home they had ever known; and so Barbara, gentle, sweet-souled Barbara, took them into her sunny room; and cared for them as Millicent had done. For a day they were silent, and then they sang as merrily as before. There was still sunshine; and crispy groundsel and clear cool water were given them by hands as gentle, if not so fair, as those which had tended them before.