the rooms with their antique and stately
furniture, the paintings on the wall, before which he had stood and
gazed, wondering if the world was as fair as those landscapes of sunny
France and Italy and why the men and women of the house of Tilly, whose
portraits hung upon the walls, looked at him so kindly with those dark
eyes of theirs, which seemed to follow him everywhere, and he imagined
they even smiled when their lips were illumined by a ray of sunshine.
Pierre looked at them again with a strange interest,--they were like the
faces of living friends who welcomed him back to Tilly after years of
absence.

Pierre entered a well-remembered apartment which he knew to be the
favorite sitting-room of the Lady de Tilly. He walked hastily across
it to look at a picture upon the wall which he recognized again with a
flush of pleasure.

It was the portrait of Amelie painted by himself during his last visit
to Tilly. The young artist, full of enthusiasm, had put his whole soul
into the work, until he was himself startled at the vivid likeness which
almost unconsciously flowed from his pencil. He had caught the divine
upward expression of her eyes, as she turned her head to listen to him,
and left upon the canvas the very smile he had seen upon her lips.
Those dark eyes of hers had haunted his memory forever after. To his
imagination that picture had become almost a living thing. It was as a
voice of his own that returned to his ear as the voice of Amelie. In
the painting of that portrait Pierre had the first revelation of a
consciousness of his deep love which became in the end the master
passion of his life.

He stood for some minutes contemplating this portrait, so different from
her in age now, yet so like in look and expression. He turned suddenly
and saw Amelie; she had silently stepped up behind him, and her features
in a glow of pleasure took on the very look of the picture.

Pierre started. He looked again, and saw every feature of the girl of
twelve looking through the transparent countenance of the perfect
woman of twenty. It was a moment of blissful revelation, for he felt an
assurance at that moment that Amelie was the same to him now as in their
days of youthful companionship. "How like it is to you yet, Amelie!"
said he; "it is more true than I knew how to make it!"

"That sounds like a paradox, Pierre Philibert!" replied she, with a
smile. "But it means, I suppose, that you painted a universal portrait
o