"Do you see no change in your portrait?" asked she.

"In mine?--None!" replied Walter, examining it. "But let me see! Yes;
there is a slight change,--an improvement, I think, in the picture,
though none in the likeness. It has a livelier expression than
yesterday, as if some bright thought were flashing from the eyes, and
about to be uttered from the lips. Now that I have caught the look,
it becomes very decided."

While he was intent on these observations, Elinor turned to the painter.
She regarded him with grief and awe, and felt that he repaid her with
sympathy and commiseration, though wherefore she could but vaguely guess.

"That look!" whispered she, and shuddered. "How came it there?"

"Madam," said the painter, sadly, taking her hand, and leading her
apart, "in both these pictures, I have painted what I saw. The artist--
the true artist--must look beneath the exterior. It is his gift--his
proudest but often a melancholy one--to see the inmost soul, and by a
power indefinable even to himself to make it glow or darken upon the
canvas, in glances that express the thought and sentiment of years.
Would that I might convince myself of error in the present instance!"

They had now approached the table, on which were heads in chalk, hands
almost as expressive as ordinary faces, ivied church-towers, thatched
cottages, old thunder-stricken trees, Oriental and antique costume, and
all such picturesque vagaries of an artist's idle moments. Turning them
over, with seeming carelessness, a crayon sketch of two figures was
disclosed.