Greta had been much in the habit of spending an hour or so before going to bed in dwelling on her grievances and picturing to herself a state of life in which all should be made easy and pleasant—when she should be surrounded by luxuries and splendour, dress in velvet and jewels, and associate with nobles and princes. To-night, however, the hour was spent very differently—in honest repentance, confession, and humiliation of herself before her heavenly Father, in self-examination and comparison of herself with the standard of God's word. This was not one of those gusty paroxysms of exaggerated self-reproach and violent weeping in which she had not seldom indulged when she could not help seeing that she had been in the wrong, and which left her more self-satisfied than before. Now she felt a genuine conviction of her own unworthiness and helplessness, and cried earnestly for help to the Strong. That hour had its influence over Greta's whole life. Philip, too, had his exercises in his own little room, which he had so long shared with Fritz. This scheme of going to America would, if carried out, be a deathblow to his dearest hope—a hope long cherished in secret, and which had to-day received new life from the words of, Count Maurice: "You should be an artist." Philip loved everything that was beautiful. That which had been talent and knack in his father, in him rose to something like genius. There lived in the neighbourhood of Fulda a nobleman who had a fine gallery of pictures and statues. He was a good-natured man and not averse to a little gossip now and then with the schoolmaster, Philip's uncle, on his favourite subjects of the odes of Horace and the Greek metres; and finding Philip had a fancy for drawing, he invited the boy to come and see his pictures whenever he liked. Philip went, and found a new world opened to him. Was it possible that he could ever make anything like that gladiator sinking and dying there in the marble—like that wonderful Venus with her broken arms upraised and her foot on the tortoise? From that hour, Philip's darling dream was that he might some day go to Rome and study under some of those great masters of whom he had heard. He had now been at home for two years, where he had no chance to see a picture or statue, and no one with whom he could talk over his plans, but none the less had he cherished them in secret. But now, if this new plan were carried out, all must be given up. A new country would be no place for an artist; there would be nothing but rough work to do.