VERY COLD


When Dennis entered Mr. Ludolph's store Christine was absent on a visit
to New York. On her return she resumed her old routine. At this time
she and her father were occupying a suite of rooms at a fashionable
hotel. Her school-days were over, Mr. Ludolph preferring to complete
her education himself in accordance with his peculiar views and tastes.
She was just passing into her twentieth year, and looked upon the world
from the vantage points of health, beauty, wealth, accomplishments of
the highest order, and the best social standing. Assurance of a long
and brilliant career possessed her mind, while pride and beauty were
like a coronet upon her brow. She was the world's ideal of a queen.

And yet she was not truly happy. There was ever a vague sense of unrest
and dissatisfaction at heart. She saw that her father was proud and
ambitious in regard to her, but she instinctively felt that he neither
loved nor trusted her to any great extent. She seemed to be living in
a palace of ice, and at times felt that she was turning into ice
herself; but her very humanity and womanhood, deadened and warped
though they were, cried out against the _cold_ of a life without God or
love. In the depths of her soul she felt that something was wrong, but
what, she could not understand. It seemed that she had everything that
heart could wish, and that she ought to be satisfied.

She had at last concluded that her restlessness was the prompting of
a lofty ambition, and that if she chose she could win world-wide
celebrity as an artist. This, with the whole force of her strong nature,
she had determined to do, and for over two years had worked with an