f his London
life, he had made his hurried visits to Paris, these pictures, then in
the Luxembourg, had been among those which had most vitally affected
him. The beautiful surface and keeping which connected them with
the old tradition, together with the modern spirit, the trenchant
simplicity of their portraiture, had sent him back--eager and
palpitating--to his own work on the picture of Madame de Pastourelles,
or on the last stages of the 'Genius Loci.'

He looked into them now, sharply, intently, his heart beating to
suffocation under the stress of that startling phrase of Watson's.
Still tremulous--as one in flight--he made himself recognise certain
details of drawing and modelling in 'Madame Vinet' which had given him
hints for the improvement of the portrait of Phoebe; and, again,
the ease with which the head moves on its shoulders, its relief, its
refinement--how he had toiled to rival them in his picture of Madame
Eugenie!--translating as he best could the cold and disagreeable
colour of the Ingres school into the richer and more romantic handling
of an art influenced by Watts and Burne-Jones!

Then he passed on to the young girl's portrait--the girl in white
muslin, turning away her graceful head from the spectator, and showing
thereby the delicacy of her profile, the wealth of her brown hair, the
beauty of her young and virginal form. Suddenly, his eyes clouded;
he turned abruptly away, left the room without looking at another
picture, and was soon hurrying through the crowded streets northward
towards the Gare Saint-Lazare.

Carrie!--his child!--his own flesh and blood. His heart cried out for
her. Watson's _brusquerie_--the young girl of the picture--and his
own bitter and disappointed temper--they had all their share in the
emotion which possessed him.

The child whom he remembered, with her mother's eyes, and that light
mutinous charm, which was not Phoebe's--why, she was now seventeen!--a
little younger--only a little younger, than the girl of the portrait.
His longing fancy pursued her--saw her a wild, pretty, laughing thing,
nearly a woman--and then fell back passionately on a more familiar
image!--of the baby at his knee, open-mouthed, her pink lips rounded
for the tidbit just about to descend upon them, her sweet and
sparkling eyes fixed upon her father.

'My God!--where are they?--are they alive, or dead? How
cruel--_cruel_!' And he ground his teeth in one of those paroxysms
which every now a