at is pure and lofty in noble natures, though cramped by the many
limitations incident to our age and individual constitution.

Bella's pencil worked rapidly while he was speaking, and she often
nodded, her head assentingly. When he ended she looked full at him, and
said,--

"You are the best teacher I ever met with;" then, with beaming eyes and
glowing cheeks, she turned again to her work.

"That depends upon the pupil," answered Eric, politely acknowledging
the compliment.

"I want you, now," continued Bella, still blushing deeply, "I want you
to lay your hand on Roland's head. Please do; it will give precisely
the effect I desire. Please do as I say."

He consented, protesting at the same time that the idea did not please
him, for Roland should learn to carry his head free.

Bella shook her head with vexation, and continued her work, no longer,
however, on the figure of Eric, but solely on that of Roland.

"Now I have it!" she suddenly exclaimed; "that is it! You resemble
Murillo's St. Anthony."

"That is just what I noticed," cried Roland. "Manna scolded me for it
at the musical festival."

Clodwig also agreed with his wife.

"It is a favorite picture of mine," he said. "How plainly I can see it
now before me! The figure of Anthony on his knees, with a knotted staff
beside him; the landscape barely indicated; a tree in the background,
and the thicket near by. Angels are playing on the ground and floating
in the air; one turns over the leaves of the Saint's book, while
another holds up to an angel hovering in the heavens a lily which has
grown from the earth; the flower thus forming, as it were, a link
between heaven and earth."

Eric was somewhat embarrassed by Roland's relating how he had fallen
asleep in the chapel of the convent, and how suddenly the black nun
stood beside him, and he saw the picture above him.

A request of Eric's that the reading might stop here, and the reasons
on which he based his request, assumed various shapes in the minds of
his hearers.

"To-day's experience convinces me," he said, "that we cannot control
our thoughts or pursue them to any worthy issue, when obliged to remain
in a position foreign to those thoughts, or in one at least that has no
connection with them. There is a mysterious sympathy between our
thoughts and the position and state of our bodies."

Eric's words worked in four different ways upon the party assembled. In
his own case, they served to describe