eign birthplace imperatively essential factors in
the award of praise for even faithful and noble work? We lament the
caustic moroseness of embittered Schopenhauer, brooding savagely over
his failure to secure contemporaneous recognition; yet after all, did
he malign his race, or his age, when, in answer to the inquiry where he
desired to be buried, he scornfully exclaimed: "No matter where;
posterity will find me."

It was on the 26th of October, a week subsequent to the receipt of the
letter which contained the check sent in payment for the picture, that
Beryl sat down on the stone sill of her oriel window, to rest in the
seclusion of her room, after the labors of the day.

It was the anniversary of her ill-starred visit to X----, and
melancholy memories had greeted her at dawn, clung to her skirts,
chanted their dismal refrain, and renewed the pain which time had in
some degree dulled. Four years ago she had felt her mother's feverish
lips on hers, in a parting kiss, and four years ago to-day the sun of
her girlhood had passed suddenly into total eclipse. Since then, moving
in a semi-twilight, suffering had prematurely aged her, and she had
schooled herself to expect no star, save that of duty, to burn along
her lonely path. To-day, she thought of the pride her picture would
have aroused in her devoted father; of the comforts the money would
have purchased for her invalid mother; of the pleasure, success as an
artist would have brought to her own ambitious soul, if only it had not
come so many years too late. What crown could fame bring to one,
dwelling always in the chill shadow of a terrible shame? The glory of
noble renown could never gild a name that had answered at the convicts'
roll call; a name which, at any moment, Bertie's arrest might drag back
to the disgrace of established felony.

Of all mocking fiends, the arch torturer is that hand which draws aside
the black curtain of grim actuality, and shows us the wonderful realm
of "might have been", where lost hopes blossom eternally, and the
witchery of hallowed illusions is never dispelled.

Wearily Beryl closed her eyes, as though the white lids availed to shut
out visions, tantalizing as the dream of bubbling springs, and
palm-fringed isles of dewy verdure, to the delirious traveller dying of
thirst, in the furnace blasts of mid-desert.

If she had defied her mother's wishes, and refused to go to X--? How
different the world would seem to her; but, what