her baby squeezing her finger.

II

1

When Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit nursery,
he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees beside his bed,
absorbed in the vision he had seen. That young figure in Madonna blue,
with the halo of bright hair; the sleeping babe in the fine dusk; the
silence, the adoration in that white room! He saw, too; a vision of the
past, when Noel herself had been the sleeping babe within her mother's
arm, and he had stood beside them, wondering and giving praise. It
passed with its other-worldliness and the fine holiness which belongs to
beauty, passed and left the tormenting realism of life. Ah! to live with
only the inner meaning, spiritual and beautifed, in a rare wonderment
such as he had experienced just now!

His alarum clock, while he knelt in his narrow, monkish little
room--ticked the evening hour away into darkness. And still he knelt,
dreading to come back into it all, to face the world's eyes, and the
sound of the world's tongue, and the touch of the rough, the gross, the
unseemly. How could he guard his child? How preserve that vision in her
life, in her spirit, about to enter such cold, rough waters? But the
gong sounded; he got up, and went downstairs.

But this first family moment, which all had dreaded, was relieved,
as dreaded moments so often are, by the unexpected appearance of the
Belgian painter. He had a general invitation, of which he often availed
himself; but he was so silent, and his thin, beardless face, which
seemed all eyes and brow, so mournful, that all three felt in the
presence of a sorrow deeper even than their own family grief. During the
meal he gazed silently at Noel. Once he said: "You will let me paint you
now, mademoiselle, I hope?" and his face brightened a little when
she nodded. There was never much talk when he came, for any depth of
discussion, even of art, brought out at once too wide a difference. And
Pierson could never avoid a vague irritation with one who clearly had
spirituality, but of a sort which he could not understand. After dinner
he excused himself, and went off to his study. Monsieur would be happier
alone with the two girls! Gratian, too, got up. She had remembered
Noel's words: "I mind him less than anybody." It was a chance for Nollie
to break the ice.

2

"I have not seen you for a long time, mademoiselle," said the painter,
when they were alone.

Noel was sitting in front of the