granted that she had been brought up in the religion of the
country, never even guessed at it, not imagining that a child
could remain so utterly uninstructed in the simple facts and
histories; and, somehow, Madelon divined this, and began to
have a shy reluctance in asking questions which would betray
an unsuspected ignorance. "This is such or such a Madonna,"
the artist would say; "there you see St. Elizabeth, and that
is St. John the Baptist, you know." Or he would point out St.
Agnes, or St. Cecilia, or St. Catherine, as the case might be.

"Who was St. Catherine?" Madelon ventured to ask one day.

"Did you never hear of her?" he answered. "Well then, I will
tell you all about her. There were, in fact, two St.
Catherines, but this one here, who, you see, has a wheel,
lived long before the other. There once dwelt in Alexandria a
lovely and accomplished maiden--" And he would no doubt have
related to her the whole of the beautiful old mystical legend;
but her father, who happened to be with them that day,
interrupted him.

"Don't stuff the child's head with that nonsense," he said,
and, perhaps, afterwards gave his friend a hint; for Madelon
heard no more about the saints, and was left to puzzle out
meanings and stories for the pictures for herself--and queer
enough ones she often made, very likely. On the other hand,
the American, who liked to talk to her in his own tongue, and
to make her chatter to him in return, would tell her many a
story of the old master painters, of Cimabue and the boy
Giotto, of Lionardo da Vinci, and half a dozen others; old,