“It is not I, that woman. I wish to God it were.” She put her hands up to her face, and took a step or two across the room, and repeated a little wildly, “I wish to God it were!” “It is very, very like you,” said Aline softly, recovering her girl's worship of the other's stately beauty. Norma caught her by the arm and pointed at the portrait. “Can't you see the difference?” But the soul behind the picture had not spoken to Aline. There was love hovering around the pictured woman's lips; happy tenderness and trust and promise mingled in her eyes; in so far as the shadow of a flower-like woman's passion could strain her features, so were her features strained. Yet she looked out of the canvas a proud, queenly woman, capable of heroisms and lofty sacrifice. She was one who loved deeply and demanded love in return. She was warm of the flesh, infinitely pure of the spirit. The face was the face of Norma, but the soul was that of the dream-woman who had come and sat in the sitter's chair and communed with Jimmie as he painted her. And Norma heard her voice. It was an indictment of her life, a judgment and a sentence. “I am glad you can't, dear,” she said to Aline, regaining her balance. “Tell him I shall prize it above all my wedding-gifts.” They talked quietly, for a while about Jimmie's affairs, the pilgrimage through southern France and northern Italy, his illness, his work. His poverty Aline was too proud to mention. “And you, my dear?” asked Norma, kindly. “I?” “What about yourself? You are not looking as happy as you were. My dear child,” she said, bending forward earnestly, “do you know that no one has ever come to me with their troubles in all my life--not once. I'm beginning to feel I should be happier if some one did. You have had yours---I have heard just a little. You see we all have them and we might help each other.” “You have no troubles, Miss Hardacre,” said Aline, touched. “You are going to be married in a week's time.” “And you?” “Never,” said Aline. “Never.” Suddenly she poured her disastrous little love-story into Norma's ears. It was a wonderful new comfort to the child, this tender magic of the womanly sympathy. Oh! she loved him, of course she loved him, and he loved her; that was the piteous part of it. If Miss Hardacre only knew what it was to have the heart-ache! It was dreadful. And there was no hope. “And is that all?” asked Norma, when she had lowered the curtain on her tragedy. “You are eating out your heart for him and won't see him just because he won't believe in Jimmie? Listen. I feel sure that he will soon believe in Jimmie. He must. And then you'll be entirely happy.”