the garden and Rossetti at once, and partly because she
felt the romance of the foolish situation. She knew of
the shadow her hair made around her throat, and that her
eyes were glorious in the moonlight. Going back to bed,
she paused before the looking-glass and wafted a kiss,
as she blew the candle out, to the face she saw there.
It was such a pretty face, and so full of tire spirit
of. Rossetti and the moonlight, that she couldn't help
it. Then she slept, dreamlessly, comfortably, and late;
and in the morning she had never taken cold.

Philadelphia had pointed and sharpened all this. The
girl's training there had vitalized her brooding dreams
of producing what she worshipped, had given shape and
direction to her informal efforts, had concentrated them
upon charcoal and canvas. There was an enthusiasm for
work in the Institute, a canonization of names, a blazing
desire to imitate that tried hard to fan itself into
originality. Elfrida kindled at once, and felt that her
soul had lodged forever In her fingers, that art had
found for her, once for all, a sacred embodiment. She
spoke with subdued feeling of its other shapes; she was
at all points sympathetic; but she was no longer at all
points desirous. Her aim was taken. She would not write
novels or compose operas; she would paint. There was some
renunciation in it and some humility. The day she came
home, looking over a dainty sandalwood box full of early
verses, twice locked against her mother's eye, "The desire
of the moth for the star," she said to herself; but she
did not tear them up. That would have been brutal.