.

"It is an Annunciation, isn't it?" inquired Lily, calmly. But her heart
was failing her, for in the beauty of the exquisite, enraptured face,
she saw what might have been the very soul of Valerie West.

His father, removing his spectacles, delivered himself of an opinion
concerning mysticism, and betrayed an illogical tendency to drift toward
the Concord School of Philosophy. However, there seemed to be
insufficient incentive; he glanced coldly toward Cameron and resumed
Herbert Spencer and his spectacles.

"Mother, don't you want to stroll on the lawn a bit?" he asked
presently. "It looks very inviting to a city man's pavement-worn feet."

She drew her light wool shawl around her shoulders and took her tall
son's arm.

For a long while they strolled in silence, passed idly through the
garden where masses of peonies hung over the paths, and pansies, iris,
and forget-me-nots made the place fragrant.

It was not until they came to the plank bridge where the meadow rivulet,
under its beds of cress and mint, threaded a shining way toward the
woods, that his mother said in a troubled voice:

"You are not happy, Louis."

"Why, mother--what an odd idea!"

"Am I mistaken?" she asked, timidly.

"Yes, indeed, you are. I am very happy."

"Then," she said, "what is it that has changed you so?"

[Illustration: "'You are not happy, Louis.'"]

"Changed me?"

"Yes, dear."

"I am not changed, mother."

"Do you think a mother can be mistaken in her only son? You are so
subdued, so serious. You are like men who have known sorrow.... What
sorrow have you ever known, Louis?"

"None. No great one, mother. Perhaps, lately, I have
developed--recognised--become aware of the sombre part of life--become
sensitive to it--to unhappiness in others--and have cared more--"

"You speak like a man who has suffered."

"But I haven't, mother," he insisted. "Of course, every painter worries.
I did last winter--last winter--" He hesitated, conscious that last
winter--on the snowy threshold of the new year--sorrow and pain and
happiness and pity had, in an instant, assumed for him a significance
totally new.

"Mother," he said slowly, "if I have changed it is only in a better
understanding of the world and those who live in it. I have cared very
little about people; I seem to have come to care more, lately. What they
did, what they thought, hoped, desired, endured, suffered, interested me
little except as it concerned my work. A