‘I am very glad to hear it,’ said he, and he was at no loss to guess to what kind of happiness she alluded. If he had been—his eyes fell upon her hands, clasped upon her knee, and upon the solitary sapphire hoop which decked the third finger of the left hand, with the broad tight gold guard above. That was enough. He had observed her hands in days gone by, and then, he knew, when they were at Ems and Nassau, she had worn several rings, old-fashioned, but valuable—a diamond one, and a pearl and emerald one, and others. They were gone. Nothing remained but the sapphire hoop. ‘Let me congratulate you on your happiness,’ he added, ‘and forgive my saying that the ring you wear is a good omen. Those blue stones mean steadfastness and faith.’ ‘Yes, I know. Those qualities are about the best things we can have. Don’t you think so?’ ‘They are very good things,’ he replied slowly, as he thought within himself, ‘Two can be steadfast: one may steadfastly give up, as well as steadfastly cling to a thing.’ ‘Are you not tired with your exertions last night?’ he asked. ‘I—oh no! I am very strong; I do not easily get tired. I should like always to feel as I did feel last night: as if nothing would ever be difficult again, as if one’s powers would easily sweep away every obstacle. Do you know, in the scene from Hermann and Thusnelda, I was wishing, with all my heart, that I was here in my atelier, with an appropriate subject. I felt as if I could have painted then.’ ‘Yes, one lives a full life at such moments. That reminds me that at this season daylight rapidly departs. May I not see your pictures now?’ ‘With pleasure, such as they are,’ she answered, rising, and pushing an easel round, so as to show the picture in the best light. ‘This is but a sketch,’ said he, standing before it. ‘Have you nothing finished?’ ‘N—no,’ said Sara, pausing; and as she forced herself to make the calculation, she found that she had never finished anything since her visit to Ems; since she had known Jerome Wellfield. ‘I have finished nothing lately,’ she exclaimed, struck with the thought, and involuntarily speaking out her reflections. ‘I finish nothing now. I begin things, and then the impulse fades away, and they are neglected.’ ‘It is as well not to insist upon working out every crude attempt,’ he said—and she thought his face took an expression of gravity, as he continued to look at the sketch—‘because if you do that, you are not an artist any more, but a machine; but it is also well occasionally to persevere in carrying out some conception, even if you do not find yourself altogether in sympathy with your first idea. That is discipline, which in moderation is good. What is this?’ he added, so drily, and so abruptly, that she started. ‘That?’ she answered, a little hurriedly; ‘oh, it was a verse from a little poem of Sully Prudhomme’s which struck my fancy. Where is it?’