"I will show it to you, if you wish," said Margaret, laying her hand upon the key; but the princess stopped her.
"No, no," she said. "Do not. I think I understand. It is your great picture, is it not? And you do not want any one to see it until it is finished."
Margaret was silent for a moment, then, as the princess put her arm round her, and laid her cheek against Margaret's, she said:
"If I ever am so fortunate as to do anything approaching 'great,' this will be it, and I do not want you to see it until it is finished, princess."
"I would not see it for worlds until you say that I may, dear," said the girl, lovingly.
Day by day Margaret worked at the picture; it took possession of her body and soul. All the anguish of that awful night, when she battled against life and prayed for death, was portrayed in that savage sea and darkling sky.
She finished the scene, and was looking at it one day, with the dissatisfaction that the true artist always feels, when she thought of the words of Turner: "No landscape, beautiful as it may be, is complete without the human figure, God's masterpiece in nature."
She pondered over this for awhile, then, taking up her brush, she painted on the top of the rock the figure of a woman. It was that of a young girl, half kneeling, half lying, the water lapping savagely at her feet, her face upturned to the angry sky.
Half unconsciously she painted that face as her own—a girl's face, white and wan, marked with an agony beyond that of the fear of death. Despair and utter hopelessness spoke eloquently in the dark eyes and the attitude of the figure; and when she had finished it, she stood and gazed at it, half frightened by its realism.
She knew that if it was not a great picture, it was a picture at which no one could look at and pass by unmoved.