and confess to her that I know nothing about it; only if her style is
right, my art is wrong."

"What sort of a world does this new deity of yours belong to?" asked the
clergyman.

"Not to yours," replied Wharton quickly. "There is nothing medieval
about her. If she belongs to any besides the present, it is to the next
world which artists want to see, when paganism will come again and we
can give a divinity to every waterfall. I tell you, Hazard, I am sick at
heart about our church work; it is a failure. Never till this morning
did I feel the whole truth, but the instant I got inside the doors it
flashed upon me like St. Paul's great light. The thing does not belong
to our time or feelings."

The conversation having thus come round to the subject which Mr. Hazard
wanted to discuss, the three men plunged deep into serious talk which
lasted till after midnight had struck from the neighboring church.

_Chapter II_

Punctually the next day at three o'clock, Esther Dudley appeared in her
aunt's drawing-room where she found half a dozen ladies chatting, or
looking at Mr. Murray's pictures in the front parlor. The lady of the
house sat in an arm-chair before the fire in an inner room, talking with
two other ladies of the board, one of whom, with an aggressive and
superior manner, seemed finding fault with every thing except the Middle
Ages and Pericles.

"A tailor who builds a palace to live in," said she, "is a vulgar
tailor, and an artist who paints the tailor and his palace as though he
were painting a doge of Venice, is a vulgar artist."

"But, Mrs. Dyer," replied her hostess coldly, "I don't believe there was
any real difference between a doge of Venice and a doge of New York.
They all made fortunes more or less by cheating their neighbors, and
when they were rich they wanted portraits. Some one told them to send
for Mr. Tizian or Mr. Wharton, and he made of them all the gentlemen
there ever were."

Mrs. Dyer frowned a protest against this heresy. "Tizian would have
respected his art," said she; "these New York men are making money."

"For my part," said Mrs. Murray as gently as she could, "I am grateful
to any one who likes beautiful things and is willing to pay for them,
and I hope the artists will make them as beautiful as they can for the
money. The number is small."

With this she rose, and moving to the table, called her meeting to
order. The ladies seated themselves in a business-like way roun