e was quite happy. I was only five, but I saw
then, and later, that women bear their sorrows differently from men. I
don't want to cry; I want to make swings."

"Very well. It is _very_ well," said the great man, and there was a mist
in his eyes as he looked at the valiant little creature. "It's a great
gospel--that! I wish I could teach it to every woman on earth. _Don't
cry! Make swings_!"

She had resumed her hat and jacket, and, with the lesson-day slip in her
hand, was at the farther door, when she turned with sweetest pleading in
her eyes. "Illustrious One!" she said, "I've not told you all. I've not
asked you what I really want to know."

Already there was between them that quick comprehension of each other
which exists for those people who have special gift.

"Well?" he said, waiting with a smile.

"You remember a pupil of yours named Charlotte Hopkins?"

"Very well, indeed."

"You changed her greatly."

"It is to be hoped so," he answered, with a laugh.

"She told me much of you: of your power, of your ability to make people
over. And she said you had studied in the East, and had learned how to
make people do your will, even when they were far away from you. Is it
true?"

"Some say so," he answered.

"It is not hypnotism?" she questioned.

"I'm no Svengali, if that's what you mean," he responded, grimly. "I'll
watch you, Katrine Dulany, and, if I find you worthy, some day I may
tell you more."

More moved by her personality than he had been by any other in the
twenty-five years of his teaching, he stood by the window and watched
her cross the court-yard below and disappear through the great iron
gates.

"Poor little girl!" he thought. "Beauty and gift and a divine despair.
Everything ready to make the great artist. And then the heart of a
woman, which is like quicksilver, to reckon with. I spoke bravely about
her forgetting, but I have doubts. Sometimes I wonder if it be possible
for a person with a fine and generous nature to become a really great
artist. Perhaps it is necessary to have great egotism and selfishness
for the arts' development. I wonder," he said, aloud; repeating, after a
minute's silence, "I wonder--"

XVI

MRS. RAVENEL UNWITTINGLY BECOMES AN ALLY OF KATRINE

After his mother's recovery Frank went back to New York immediately,
keen to arrange the railroad matters and get the actual work started. In
the first interview with De Peyster, however, he found that Dermo