and never suspected the true state of the case. On they went, past
fascinating marble shops and jewelers' windows filled with Florentine
mosaics, across the Ponte Vecchio, down a shady street, and into the
rough-hewn, grim-looking palace. It was to Erica like a dream of pain,
the surroundings were so lovely, the sunshine so perfect, and her own
heart so sore.

But within that old palace she found the true cure for sore hearts. She
remembered having looked with Brian at an "Ecce Home," by Carlo Dolci
and thought she would like to see it again. It was not a picture her
father would have cared for, and she left him looking at Raphael's
"Three Ages of Man," and went by herself into the little room which is
called the "Hall of Ulysses." The picture was a small one and had what
are considered the usual faults of the painter, but it was the
first "Ecce Homo" that Erica had ever cared for; and, whatever the
shortcomings of the execution, the ideal was a most beautiful one.
The traces of physical pain were not brought into undue prominence,
appearing not at all in the face, which was full of unutterable calm
and dignity. The deep, brown eyes had the strange power which belongs to
some pictures; they followed you all over the room there was no escaping
them. They were hauntingly sad eyes, eyes in which there lurked grief
unspeakable; not the grief which attends bodily pain, but the grief
which grieves for others the grief which grieves for humanity, for
its thousand ills and ignorances, its doubts and denials, its sins
and sufferings. There was no bitterness in it, no restlessness, no
questioning. It was the grief of a noble strong man whose heart is torn
by the thought of the sin and misery of his brothers, but who knows that
the Father can, and will, turn the evil into the means of glorious gain.

As Erica looked, the true meaning of pain seemed to flash upon her.
Dimly she had apprehended it in the days of her atheism, had clung to
the hope that the pain of the few brought the gain of the many; but now
the hope became certainty, the faith became open vision. For was it not
all here, written in clearest characters, in the life of the Ideal Man?
And is not what was true for him, true for us too? We talk much about
"Christ our example," and struggle painfully along the uphill road of
the "Imitation of Christ," meaning by that too often a vague endeavor
to be "good," to be patient, to be not entirely absorbed in the things
which