cil, and while she was still
musing over the problem as to whether life's fulfilment must always fall
short of its promise, the drawing-room door was thrown open and a
visitor announced. Elisabeth was tired and depressed, and did not feel
in the mood for keeping up her reputation for brilliancy; so it was
with a sigh of weariness that she rose to receive Quenelda Carson, a
struggling little artist whom she had known slightly for years. But her
interest was immediately aroused when she saw that Quenelda's usually
rosy face was white with anguish, and the girl's pretty eyes swollen
with many tears.

"What is the matter, dear?" asked Elisabeth, with that sound in her
voice which made all weak things turn to her. "You are in trouble, and
you must let me help you."

Quenelda broke out into bitter weeping. "Oh! give him back to me--give
him back to me," she cried; "you can never love him as I do, you are too
cold and proud and brilliant."

Elisabeth stood as if transfixed. "Whatever do you mean?"

"You have everything," Quenelda went on, in spite of the sobs which
shook her slender frame; "you had money and position to begin with, and
everybody thought well of you and admired you and made life easy for
you. And then you came out of your world into ours, and carried away the
prizes which we had been striving after for years, and beat us on our
own ground; but we weren't jealous of you--you know that we weren't; we
were glad of your success, and proud of you, and we admired your genius
as much as the outside world did, and never minded a bit that it was
greater than ours. But even then you were not content--you must have
everything, and leave us nothing, just to satisfy your pride. You are
like the rich man who had everything, and yet took from the poor man his
one ewe lamb; and I am sure that God--if there is a God--will punish you
as He punished that rich man."

Elisabeth turned rather pale; whatever had she done that any one dared
to say such things to her as this? "I still don't understand you," she
said.

"I never had anything nice in my life till I met him," the girl
continued incoherently--"I had always been poor and pinched and wretched
and second-rate; even my pictures were never first-rate, though I worked
and worked all I knew to make them so. And then I met Cecil Farquhar,
and I loved him, and everything became different, and I didn't mind
being second-rate if only he would care for me. And he did; and I
tho