other, white, earnest, the eyes almost quivering with eagerness, the brow beaded, the darkness receding from it in folds as if brushed aside by keen motion, the whole suffused with a wild radiance. It might be Lucifer. The light is so managed that this is the only object casting a distinct shadow. His extended hand is a flash.

There should be something counter to this; and erelong, higher up than, but not far distant from the first face, another issues into life. It is not remarkable except for its placidity. It looks down from its cloud as if full of heavenly content; you perceive the shades are lighter around it, and at once notice its air of vigilance and certainty. All the calm influence of the painting spreads from that. It might be some seraph whose crown is

won.

The composition of the three is good, having the effect of a broad sunbeam falling slantwise; and the coloring comprises a rich succession and mingling of tones and semitones, although on a scale of strict selection.

It is curious that while the first form is so vague and dim, she seems nevertheless the only real one, and these two remaining faces but the

people of her reverie: one, perhaps the image of life, temptation overcome; the other, the ardent dream of passion. You do not doubt into which arms she will fall.

You are apprised also of something foreign in this form, something, so to say, supernatural. That absorbed smile seems to part and float across the face, these colors to change with a quick pulsation; you fancy, if released from the frame and scales, it would soar up and away; you feel uncomfortably, as if the eyes saw you. You believe the artist to have worked beyond his will, and to have wrought that of which he was not conscious, a power above his control inspiring his pencil. It is a wonderful picture, and opulent in tints that would cool an August noon. But having glanced away, as you return it is once more enveloped in its smoky drapery, and only by a similar process would you again discover the same objects.

This is what you and I see, little enough for a man to waste so much life on; but what did Sir Rohan see? A mistier shade, a whiter film, something not of his creation. Vengeful arrows shot from the proud pathos of those eyes; through the

haze he had wrought over them, the lips quivered at his gaze with flecks of blue flickering flame; though fixed, it hovered; though inanimate, it lived.

"Had he been mad, so to deceive himself? Could he ever escape it? Here too! Here too!"

But Sir Rohan had no time to utter such words, or frame so distinctly their thought. The sense alone smote him; he was wrapped again in the black and poisonous cloud. So shortly since so buoyant, so hopeful,—what had ruined him now?

He stood tensely, half turned away, but his eyes by irresistible attraction drawn toward and returning that gaze, livid and agonized.

Great God! the Ghost was in the picture.

XII.

MORTMAIN.

OT long Sir Rohan remained inactive. With

NOT

out pausing to consider consequences, without hesitating at destroying such labor, he seized the little palette-knife lying near and dashed it madly through the canvas.

A sudden shock, like a stroke of lightning, smote him; then, for a space, the very silence seemed to sing in his ears. A vacant space, into which ebbed a tide of air, a rush, a tumult, and with all her pristine strength and hate the Ghost flared forth and enveloped him.

Voluntarily she had entered this prison, to torment him truly, but yet once there he could flee from her; he could escape from her and he had returned, she was bound and he had freed her.

Again the Ghost threw her net over him, again dragged him captive in her toils. There are no

means to depict, were it desirable, the horror and darkness that overwhelmed him anew; his fetters galled the more that he had been free. But in coping with material objects she had manifested an incapacity; her usual cunning seemed to have failed her, her dreadful art served her only for those of the soul. Wrapping his forehead with her clammy breath, she stifled him; her cold, long fingers were upon him, her hideous embrace around him, that shadow of her hair brushed his cheek, those fierce eyes searched him through and through. Did she breathe, he wondered; did those glances gloom and flash with the current in her veins; was that heart palpitant above him? Then, laughing despairingly at his absurdity, he saw that by her sympathy with the whole free universe its forces were kept in ebb and flow through her existence, and that thus drawing after her in infrangible connection a strength that was almost omnipotent, she acquired a personal determination, a deceitful limitation and power infinitely beyond that to be dreamed of from any mere effort of breath or blood. Now the air sobbed away from him, now poured back echoing her horrid laugh. All voluntary motion left him; the Ghost moved