ever outdone in its time had made memory itself
visible on the canvas. Something that was neither a 'harmless illness'
nor a 'miracle' had waked Angela from her torpor.

'How can I thank you?' she asked, after a long pause. 'You do not know
what it is to me to see his living face--you will call it an
illusion--it seems as if----'

She broke off suddenly and pressed her handkerchief to her lips again.

'Only what you call the unreal can last unchanged for a while,' the
painter said, catching at the word she had used, and thinking more of
his art than of her. 'Only an ideal can be eternal, but every honest
attempt to give it shape has a longer life than any living creature.
Nature makes only to destroy, but art creates for the very sake of
preserving the beautiful.'

She heard each sentence, but was too absorbed in the portrait to
follow his meaning closely. Perhaps it would have escaped her if she
had tried.

'Only good and evil are everlasting,' she said, almost unconsciously
repeating words she had heard somewhere when she was a child.

Durand looked at her quickly, but he saw that she was not really
thinking.

'What is "good"?' he asked, as if he were sure that there was no
answer to the question.

It attracted her attention, and she turned to him; she was coming back
to life.

'Whatever helps people is good,' she said.

'The French proverb says "Help thyself and God will help thee,"'
suggested Durand.

'No, it should be "Help others, and God will help you,"' Angela
answered.

The artist fixed his eyes on her as he nodded a silent assent; and
suddenly, though her face was so changed, he knew it was more like his
portrait of her than ever, and that the prophecy of his hand was
coming to fulfilment.

He stayed a moment longer, and asked if he could be of any service to
her or Madame Bernard. She thanked him vaguely, and almost smiled. He
felt instinctively that she was thinking of what she had last said,
and was wishing that some one would tell her how she might do
something for others, rather than that another should do anything for
her.

She went with him to the door at the head of the stairs and let him
out herself.

'Thank you,' she said, 'thank you! You don't know what you have done
for me!'

He looked at her in thoughtful silence for a few seconds, holding her
hand as if they were old friends.

'There is no such thing as death,' he said gravely.

And with this odd speech he left her and