of crimson, he fretted to return and look again for a change wrought out
by his brief absence; but there was none.

Hateful indeed the sight may have been of that changeful face, but it
had grown to him absolutely necessary, and more pleasant, indeed, even
when hard, cold, and unkind, than other faces not less beautiful smiling
sweet unspoken words.

He slept in a curtained space near by, and often waked in the still
watches of the after-midnight, with the Hope in his heart, flaring up
into a flame and burning him with a desire for another sight of that
fickle face. Before the picture there hung a dim, red light, which
burned all the night long. It was a swinging lamp of many tangled chains
and fretted Venetian metal work. Once it had swung before an holy altar
in an ancient Mexican town, where it had shed an unextinguished light
throughout many years. It was a holy thing; so the Youth had thought it
worthy of a place before the deep-set Picture of the chimney-piece--the
shrine of his heart's treasure. Thus awakened out of troubled sleep, he
often rose and stood before the covered Picture, beneath the swinging
red light brought--stolen, perhaps--from the sacred sanctuary of that
ancient church down in the land of Mexico. Often, with Hope, Doubt, and
Fear in his heart, he would turn away from before the untouched curtain.
"Useless, useless, useless," would be the burden of his thought.

The third Easter-tide comes with its brightness, its flowers, and its
Hopes--yet my Lady of the Picture has not changed. Still that same
relentless look; still that premonition of a No not yet said; still in
her left hand she holds the letter; still in her right hand the pen, and
the page beneath it is yet guiltless of a word.