rst centuries."

Agnes, with parted, whitening lips, could find no response. Rennes
painted her afterwards in the same attitude, and with all he remembered
of her expression, in his now famous picture, _Pilate's Wife_.

"You will never be happy--never," she murmured at last. "But perhaps no
one is happy."

"I can grant that the saints were always profoundly happy. Let me tell
you why. The state of the saint is one of dependence. His convictions,
therefore, are enduring and unclouded. He accepts his trials as
privileges; he loses all sense of his own identity; his humanity is
merged in God; his ecstasies lift him up to heaven and bring him down to
a transfigured earth. He has been bought with a ransom, and he is the
co-heir with Christ. He is found worthy of suffering. But with artists,
all is different. The saint is in search of holiness. The artist thinks
chiefly of beauty. Holiness is a state of mind--it is something
permanent. Beauty, however, mocks one half the time--it may be a
deception. Anyhow, one cannot define it, or keep it, or even
satisfactorily catch it. Our inspired moments, therefore, alternate with
a miserable knowledge of our individual wretchedness. We learn that we
are no stronger than our individuality. That is the barrier between us
and our visions. The saint has God before his eyes, and he carries Him
in his heart. The artist sees only himself and bears only the weight of
his own incompetence. But these, darling, are not the things I meant to
say to you, although they may explain my life. The common run of people
wouldn't understand all this in the least."

"I want to hear all--I want to enter into all your thoughts, David. I
have always known that those who devote themselves to the study of what
is sublime and beautiful suffer proportionately from the squalor of
actual facts."

She quoted from one or her father's speeches which he invariably gave
with much earnestness at the opening of schools of art and similar
institutions.

"The world," replied Rennes, "rewards the beautiful only inasmuch as it
flatters the senses, and the sublime remains--so far as the general
taste is concerned--altogether without response."

"But one would think," said Agnes, "that you were a disappointed or an
unsuccessful man, whereas every one admires your genius."

He laughed at her practical bent, which seemed the more fascinating
because of her picturesque appearance.

"One often feels cast down without the