ise her.

She was agitated, perturbed, and yet rapturously happy. She wished
to be alone to hug that happiness to her heart, and so she had gone
out under the apple-trees at the far end of the Thatcher orchard,
and lay there all her long length in the good green grass. The place
was full of sweet and drowsy odors. Birds called and fluted.
Butterflies and bees came and went. She had never felt so close to
Mother Earth as she did to-day, never so keenly sensed the joy of
being alive.

After a while she arose, reluctantly, and went back to the house and
her rooms. She was remembering that she hadn't yet written to Jason,
and she wanted Jason to know. Inside her sitting-room door she
stopped short, eyes widened, lips fallen apart. On the mantel,
glowing, jewel-like in the clear, pure light, herself confronted
her. Herself as a great artist saw and loved her.

She stood transfixed. The sheer power and beauty of the work, that
spell which falls upon one in the presence of all great art, held
her entranced. Her own eyes looked, at her as if they challenged
her; her own smile baffled her; there was that in the pictured face
which brought a cry to her lips. Oh, was she so fair in his eyes?
Only great love, as well as great genius, could have so portrayed
her!

This was herself as she might be, grown finer, and of a larger
faith, a deeper and sweeter charity. A sort of awe touched her. This
man who loved her, who had the power of showing her herself as she
might pray to become, this wonderful lover of hers, was no mere
amateur with a pretty gift. This was one of the few, one of the
torch-bearers!

And then she noticed the Red Admiral in the corner. She stared at it
unbelievingly. That butterfly! Why--why--She had read of one who
signed with a butterfly above his name pictures that were called
great. A thought that made her brain swim and her heart beat
suffocatingly crashed upon her like a clap of thunder. She walked
toward the mantel like one in a daze, until she stood directly
before the painting.

And it was his butterfly. And under it was his name: _Peter
Devereaux Champneys_.

The room bobbed up and down. But she didn't faint, she didn't
scream. She caught hold of the mantel to steady herself. She
wondered how she hadn't known; she had the same sense of wild
amazement that must fill one who has been brought face to face with
a stupendous, a quite impossible miracle. Such a thing couldn't
happen: and yet it is so!