n you see that, Kate? Then I am at the same time the most happy and
unhappy creature alive," cried Grace, breathlessly dropping into a chair
and holding the picture fondly near her face.

"Why?" said the astonished Kate.

"Don't you know I am forever putting myself into my pictures? And I've
succeeded too admirably with this one. The poor thing has caught my
unconscious fault of finding defects everywhere. Oh, I must get it out
of her some way; how shall I, when to me she looks so perfect?"

"You better get it out of yourself first, if that is the trouble,"
replied Kate, with a great wave of pity in her voice.

"I wish I could. Oh, why do I have to see everything in the wrong way?
It seems to me life would be heavenly, if I could know only the good in
everything." Grace put down the picture and gazed at it with stern,
accusing eyes. "I shall leave this one and begin another to-morrow," she
finally announced in a subdued tone.

"I am glad you won't rub this out, for she is too lovely," said Kate,
softly, as she went about, gently putting things in order, picking up
her music and arranging the books.

Grace sat there brooding over her life problems with a new thought in
her mind. She dimly realized that a woman must have a genuine message
herself before she tries to give it to the world. And alas, her message
was sadly deficient, she found. Mechanically she took a book from the
table and opening it at random, read:

"If the whole is ever to gladden thee,
That whole in the smallest thing thou must see."

"That is not bad philosophy, whose is it?" she thought. She looked at
the book. It was Goethe's poems, but she was not in the mood for
reading, and she sat thinking till late at night. This was a new
sentiment. She would digest it and test its practical truth.

CHAPTER V.

Take up the threads of life at home,
Let not the stitches drop;
The busy world will know 'tis done
Though ne'er it pause nor stop.

"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace
but the triumph of principles."--_Emerson._

A year passed away, and Mrs. Hayden grew no better. She was not as
cheerful as she had been at first, and instead of growing into the
brave, patient woman she longed to become, she had grown fretful and
irritable, and was in many ways different from the Mrs. Hayden Kate and
Grace had talked about so enthusiastically. None knew better than she,
how miserably she had failed t