or a Sister of Charity, or a governess, or a
hospital nurse, or a nun--no companion for a man destined to move
the world!

"Barty, you don't _know_ what you are; you have never _thought_; you
have never yet looked _within_!

"Barty, with Julia by your side and me at your back, you will be a
leader of men, and sway the destinies of your country, and raise it
above all other nations, and make it the arbiter of Europe--of the
whole world--and your seed will ever be first among the foremost of
the earth.

"Will you give up all this for a pair of bright black eyes and a
pretty white skin? Isn't Julia white enough for you?

"A painter? What a trade for a man built like you! Take the greatest
of them; what have they ever really mattered? What do they matter
now, except to those who want to imitate them and can't, or to those
who live by buying cheap the fruits of their long labors, and
selling them dear as so much wall furniture for the vulgar rich?
Besides, you will never be a great painter; you've begun too late!

"Think of yourself ten years hence--a king among men, with the world
at your feet, and at those of the glorious woman who will have
smoothed your path to greatness and fame and power! Mistress and
wife--goddess and queen in one!

"Think of the poor struggling painter, painting his poor little
pictures in his obscure corner to feed half a dozen hungry children
and the anxious, careworn wife, whose beauty has long faded away in
the petty, sordid, hopeless domestic struggle, just as her husband's
little talent has long been wasted and used up in wretched
pot-boilers for mere bread; think of poverty, debt, and degradation,
and all the miserable ugliness of life--the truest, tritest, and
oldest story in the world! Love soon flies out of the window when
these wolves snarl at the door.

"Think of all this, Barty, and think of the despair you are bringing
on one lost lonely soul who loves you as a mother loves her
first-born, and has founded such hopes on you; dismiss this pretty
little middle-class puritan from your thoughts and go back to Julia.

"I will not hurry your decision; I will come back in exactly a week
from to-night. I am at your mercy.

"Martia."

This letter made Barty very unhappy. It was a strang