sleeves and girdles
with pendents of gold--and the pages. All this had nothing in common
with his everyday surroundings. How is it possible, he thought, that
anyone who has such beautiful pictures should sell them? The doctor
must have inherited them!

Even if he had known that Lady Macbeth was the personification of
crime, it would still have seemed to him a profanation to bring her
into contact with the plebeian commonness around him.

All at once something in Ophelia's form reminded him of Femke. She
too could stand that way, plucking the petals from the flowers and
strewing them on the ground.

He had dim recollections of what had happened, and occasionally he
would ask indifferently about "that girl." He was afraid to speak
her name before Gertrude, Mina, and Pietro. He was always answered in
tones that showed him that there was no room for his romance there;
but he promised himself to visit her as soon as he got up.

"When you're better you must go to see the doctor and thank him
for curing you--but thank God first; and then you can show him what
you've painted."

"Of course, mother! I will give her the Prince of Denmark--I mean him,
the doctor."

"But be careful not to soil it; and don't forget that the ghost of the
old knight must be very pale. Stoffel said so--because it's a ghost,
you see."

"Yes, mother, I'll make it white."

"Good. And you'll make the lady there yellow?" pointing with a
knitting-needle to Ophelia.

"No, no," cried Walter quickly, "she was blue!"

"She was? Who was?"

"I only mean that I have so much yellow already, and I wanted to make
her--this one--Ophelia--I wanted to make her blue. That one washing
her hands can stay yellow."

"So far as I'm concerned," the mother said, "but don't soil it!"

Stoffel, in the meantime, had got on the track of those pictures. He
was slick and had an inquiring mind. One of his colleagues at school,
who was in some way connected with the stage, told him that such
costume-pictures were of great value to players. He also told him
other things about these pictures and about the play in general.

It was fortunate for Walter that Stoffel brought this knowledge
home with him. Even to-day there are people who find something
immoral in the words "Theatre" and "Player"; but at that time it was
still worse. The satisfaction, however, of imparting knowledge and
appearing wise put Stoffel in an attitude of mind on this occasion
that ordinarily would h