would long to be where she could hear the free wind sounding through the forest branches, or rustling the waving corn-the birds singing among the leaves, the streamlet rippling over its pebbly bed, or the waves dashing on the shingly shore. She longed to stand among the ripening corn and gather the blue scabious, or the scarlet poppy yet "crumpled from its sheath," to catch the scent of wild thyme when the bees were clustering, and sit on banks yellow with cowslips or purple with violets-or, best of all, to bury herself in the depth of leafy woods, and forgetting the dark and mocking past, live a new life alone with that benign nature, which

"Never yet betrayed the heart that loved her!"

A

CHAPTER XVII.

A GLIMPSE OF ANOTHER life.

T last Claire's wedding-day came. She was married in an old, very old church, brown with age, which stood at the opposite side of the street; and which, during all the years it had been standing there, and among all the bridal parties that had entered its doors, could never have received a fairer bride. Immediately after, she set out with her young husband to spend the honeymoon at his old home in beautiful Provençe.

On the evening of that day so eventful to those few hearts who make up the little world of this simple story, Christian Kneller had fallen into his usual afternoon's slumbers; Mère Monica had begun to put the house into order after the late hurry and bustle which had somewhat disarranged the regularity of its arrangements; and, for the first time for several weeks, Marguerite went into her atelier and sat down by the window.

"Now it is all over," she said, "now I may be quiet!" But in less than a minute

she moved restlessly. "I cannot be quiet," she said wildly, "for quiet brings thought, and thought maddens me."

Starting up, she went to a table, on which lay some of her favourite volumes. One was a copy of the first Aldine edition of Dante, bearing the date 1502, and the simple title of "Le Terze Rime di Dante." Maurice had sent it to her from Italy before doubt had come to darken the brightness which his love for her had cast over the world, and the sight of it made her start as if the ghost of her lost happiness had risen before her. Throwing a piece of cardboard over it, she took up Goethe's Egmont, and began to read where the volume first opened.

"MOTHER.-Youth and happy love have an end, and there comes a time when one thanks God if one has any corner to creep into.

"CLARA. (shudders, and after a pause stands up).-Mother! let that time come, like death! To think of it beforehand is horrible. And if it come-if we mustthen we will bear ourselves as we may ! Live without thee, Egmont ! (weeping) No! it is impossible!"

Hastily turning from Clara's joyful surprise as her lover enters, Marguerite found her death scene, and read it eagerly. Then she shut the book. "I will paint her," she said, "holding the phial to Brackenburg with one hand, and pointing to the lamp with the other, the pale and livid hues of despair, and of the deadly draught she has taken, darkening her beauty, but the great might of her love still illumining her eyes, and shining through the gathering shadows of the grave. I see her standing before me now, and I hear her softly saying, 'Extinguish the lamp silently, and without delay. I am going to rest. Steal quietly away. Close the door after thee. Be still. Wake not my mother!" "

In getting pencils and paper to make a sketch of the picture she had been imagin

ing, she caught sight of the picture of Apollo and Clymene still on the easel. There was the face of Maurice, beautified and exalted as the light of her love and genius had beautified and exalted it, his radiant eyes shining into her own. Back on her memory rushed all the glad hopes, the bright visions which had filled her with such happiness while she had worked at that picture. While she had painted it she had thought only of Maurice, she had worked only for him; his pleasure and praise were to have been her great reward, -and now, the picture and she who had painted it were alike indifferent to him.

Hastily covering it, she began her sketch, but very soon she had to stop to brush away the tears which, in spite of all her efforts, began to fall in large drops from her eyes. Soon she could not wipe them away as fast as they came, and throwing down her brush, she let them flow without making any effort to restrain them.

"I think I will never paint any more," she said within herself. "What do I care for any success, any triumph now? And how could I achieve any if I tried, when my very soul seems dead within me. But what then am I to do? I cannot die as Clara did, and break my father's heart. No one shall suffer through me, least of all he who alone has truly loved me. If I live I must have work, but not such work as I have hitherto loved. Work that will blunt the imagination and stifle the feelings, work that will make me as cold, mechanical and insensible as a machine-that is the work I must find to do now.

Farewell love and

hope and fancy-farewell poetry and art; bright visions of ideal beauty and perfection, farewell! Henceforth I am to live a dull, monotonous, joyless, uninspired existence, a life from which all the sunshine and glory have fled !"

At that instant the bells in the old church began to toll a slow, sad funeral dirge, yet with a soft and soothing under

tone in their chimes, like a faint whisper of hope amidst a wail of sorrow. The church, as has been said before, was very old, and the bells were very old too, but the tones were wonderfully rich and harmonious. Marguerite had always loved the strange and solemn music of those old bells, laden, as she often thought, with the sufferings and sorrows, the hopes and prayers of all the long centuries through which they had sounded; and now their plaintive tones, their fitful changes, their unearthly sweetness seemed to penetrate the room with a holy pathos and power, drawing her soul away from earth and all its anguish towards that diviner region where passion and pain shall cease and vanish, merged in everlasting rest. Softly she opened the window, and kneeling down as she had knelt on that night of agony which now seemed so far away, she listened to the deep, clear, dropping tones, every one of which seemed to fall on her aching heart like dew on the parched earth, bringing healing as it fell.

As she thus knelt and listened, softened and subdued, she saw through the grey November evening a funeral train coming down the street. There was a bier covered with its long black pall, and attended by a little company of black-robed priests and mourners; and as the slow procession moved along with measured tread, a strain of rich music seemed to float before them. The priests and choristers were chanting an ancient Latin hymn, well known and loved, in Dr. Neale's English translation:

"Oh one! Oh, only mansion!

O Paradise of joy!
Where tears are ever banished

And joy has no alloy !
Thy ageless walls are bonded

With amethysts unpriced,
The saints build up its fabric,

And the corner stone is Christ!

"Thou hast no shore, fair ocean!

Thou hast no time, bright Day! Dear fountain of refreshment To pilgrims far away!

Upon the Rock of Ages

They raise thy holy power.

Thine is the victor's laurel,

And thine the golden dower !"

The voices of the singers were very sweet and tuneful, and their execution did not mar the beautiful music to which St. Bernard's grand old hymn was set. Marguerite had often heard it, but never before had it impressed her so deeply. The contrast between the dark despair that had been surging in her heart, and the song of triumphant joy now sounding in her ears and thrilling through all her being, brought to her mind that great army of martyrs, saints and heroes, made perfect through suffering "whose heroic agonies rise up forever out of all lands, a sacred Miserere to Heaven, their heroic actions also, a boundless, everlasting psalm of triumph!" She thought of all those suffering ones who had known all the bitterness this world can give, and never tasted of its sweetness, yet they had gone on their way brave, patient, strong, unmindful of their own bleeding feet and torn garments, binding up the scars of the wounded, comforting the sorrowful, strengthening the feeble-living wholly for the sake of others. What was her pain compared with theirs, and yet how weakly and impatiently she had But with God's help, it should be so no longer. Words which she had read she did not now remember where seemed to spring out of her memory in characters of light: "Do good to others, and God will heal in your heart the wounds of sorrow."A little while ago she had asked herself: "Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul, which long for death, yet it cometh not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures ?" She believed that the answer had come.

Slowly, solemnly the funeral train entered the church, and for a while there was silence. Then the organ began to play Spohr's beautiful anthem-"Blest are the Departed!" Marguerite could hear every note distinctly,

as their melodious sounds floated through the grey mists of evening and seemed to gather round her, till they wrapped her in an atmosphere of peace. When the anthem was over, she rose from her knees, and calmed, comforted, strengthened, she went down stairs to her household labours.

CHAPTER XVIII.

AFTER SIX YEARS.

Six years after his marriage, Maurice Valazé was the most celebrated portrait painter in Paris. He had almost given up all other painting; for he no longer aspired to give form and being to his conceptions of the beautiful and true; he only strove for wealth and reputation; and skilful portraitpainting was a far surer road to these than works of higher art, which would take years to execute, and for which no purchaser might be found. And he had perfectly succeeded in his aims. He received prices for his pictures that to .poor struggling artists seemed fabulous; he had a distinguished reputation, a magnificent house, a beautiful and amiable wife and lovely children. He was the favourite of society, courted and flattered by high-born beauties, princes and statesmen, and fortune seemed never weary of showering her gifts on his head.

And where now was Marguerite? Living in her old home in the quiet and shadowy street, neither house nor street in any way changed, except that the honest, kindly face of Christian Kneller was now never seen there. The good Christian was dead, and Marguerite had only her faithful Monica now. She had conquered the love which she had found so sweet in its beginning, so bitter in its ending, and her life was calm and peaceful. She had returned to her beloved art, and she gained by her labours more than enough to satisfy all her wants, and provide her with such simple

pleasures as she desired. She had her books and her garden, she had congenial work, which was not so much work, as the spontaneous language of her being, and every day her hand grew more skilful in expressing the conceptions of the spirit that guided it. And though she lived a life as retired as a nun's, she did not forget the lesson she had learned that dark November day, six years ago, when she knelt at the window and listened to the hymn of St. Bernard, as the funeral train passed by. She had made her own burden light by striving to lessen the burdens that others had to bear. Many a homeless victim of want, many a wretched hope-abandoned outcast found the way to that quiet dwelling, and none ever came there without receiving help and comfort.

Sometimes Claire would drive up in a handsome carriage, and looking as gay, as sweet, as beautiful, as ever, get out and trip into the grey old house, her rich bright dress, her golden hair, and lovely looks making "a sunshine in the shady place." She would give Marguerite and Monica a hasty kiss each, repeat for the thousandth time her entreaties that they would leave that gloomy old house, and come and live with her; and then, half laughing, half angry with Marguerite for refusing her con

sent, and wondering again and again how she could bear to live such a dull and lonely life, she would kiss her once more, say a few loving words, trip back to her carriage, and drive away, like a beautiful princess in a fairy tale, escaping from some grim enchanted dwelling.

Marguerite, though she loved her as fondly as ever, never went to visit Claire. She lived in an atmosphere of artificial glitter and excitement, of show and seeming, in which Marguerite could not have existed for a day.

But if she had been in want,

or in sorrow, she would have found Marguerite's love as faithful and as tender as in the days when she had knelt by her bedside and sung her to sleep, with all a mother's fondness stirring her girlish heart. Maurice, Marguerite never saw, and when Claire talked of him as the most fashionable artist of his day, the courted companion of men and women of rank, the idol of drawingrooms, she felt it hard to believe that this could be that Maurice who had sat beside her in the dear old garden, planning a life rich with all the divinest possibilities of man, while she listened with undoubting faith, and believed that to share that life, and follow where he led, would be the noblest destiny earth could give to woman. (To be continued.)