Minor Canon could do--to come and stand by the lonely girl, though no one but himself knew what his meaning was. It could not be any help to Lottie, who was not even conscious of it. Perhaps, after all, the sole good in it was to himself. Lottie had never sung so little well. She did not sing badly. She took trouble; the Signor felt she tried to do her best, to work at it, to occupy herself with the music by way of getting rid of things more urgent which would press themselves upon her. In short, for the time Lottie applied herself to it with some faint conception of the purposes of art. To have recourse to art as an opiate against the pangs of the inner being, as an escape from the harms of life, is perhaps not the best way of coming at it, but the Signor knew that this was one of the most beaten ways towards that temple which to him enshrined everything that was best in the world. It was, perhaps, the only way in which Lottie was likely to get at it, and he saw and understood the effort. But it could not be said that the effort was very successful. The others, who were thinking only of her, felt that Lottie did not do so well as usual. She was not in voice, Purcell said to himself; and to the Minor Canon it seemed very natural that after the scene which she had just gone through poor Lottie should have but little heart for her work. It was easily explained. The Signor, however, who knew nothing of the circumstances, came to the most true conclusion. The agitation of that episode with Polly would not have harmed her singing, however it might have troubled herself, had Lottie’s citadel of personal happiness been untouched. But the flag was lowered from that donjon, the sovereign was absent. There was no inspiration left in the dull and narrowed world where Lottie found herself left. Her first opening of vigorous independent life had been taken from her, and for the first time the life of visionary passion and enthusiasm was laid low. She did not give in. She made a brave effort, stilling her excited nerves, commanding her depressed heart. The Signor himself was more excited than he had been by all the previous easy triumphs of her inspiration. Now was the test of what she had in her. Happiness dies, love fails, but art is for ever. Could she rise to the height of this principle, or would she drop upon the threshold of the sacred place incapable of answering to the guidance of art alone? Never before had he felt the same anxious interest in Lottie. He thought she was groping for that guidance, though without knowing it, in mere instinct of pain to find something that would not fail her. She did not rise so high as she had done under the other leading; but to the Signor this seemed to be in reality Lottie’s first step, though she did not know it, on the rugged ascent which is the artist’s way of life. Strait is the path and narrow is the way in that, as in all excellence. The Signor praised her more than he had ever