Perched on top of a high stool, her fingers skillfully, yet delicately plying the brush, a young woman sat copying one of Raphael's Madonnas. The picture showed the Virgin, radiant and beatified, holding the chubby Infant Jesus, while Joseph, slightly in the background, looks benignly on. The coloring in the original was wonderful. The transparent blue of Mary's gown, the living flesh tints of both mother and Child were well-nigh unattainable with modern pigments, and the young artist, descending from the stool to get a better perspective, made a gesture of discouragement as she realized how far her own work fell short.
She was a tall, striking-looking brunette with large dark eyes and classic features crowned by a mass of black hair, carelessly yet not unbecomingly arranged. Her girlish, slender figure suggested youth, while the delicate features and a broad intellectual forehead indicated refinement and more than average intelligence. Dressed in deep mourning, the sombre garments emphasized still more sharply the extreme pallor of her face. Her eyes were red as if from recent weeping. Just now, however, her thoughts were concentrated on the important work on hand, and so engrossed was she in her painting that she did not hear a man's approaching footsteps. He was close up to her before she was aware of his proximity.
"Well, Paula," he called out in stentorian tones, "how is it going?"
Startled, the young girl turned quickly. When she saw who it was, her face broke into a smile.
"Oh, Mr. Ricaby, how you frightened me! I did not hear you coming. These galleries are so lonely that even one's friends scare one." Pointing to the canvas resting on the easel in front of her, she exclaimed gleefully: "See how hard I've been working!"
The newcomer, a smooth-faced man of forty with whitening hair and kind gray eyes, smiled indulgently as he silently noted the morning's progress. Yet his attention was not given exclusively to the picture. By the glance he gave the canvas and the way he looked at the artist, a keen observer might have guessed which he admired most. That he was in love with the girl was plain enough on the circumstantial evidence alone, nor was it less clear that either she was ignorant of his feelings, or did not care. True, he was old enough to be her father. To her, he was a good friend, nothing more. Long ago he had realized this, and the love words on his lips had always died away before they were spoken. He suffered in silence. When a man of forty loves for the first time—it hurts.
Leon Ricaby was intended for the church. His personality as well as his training made that his natural vocation. His pale, ascetic-looking face, with its spiritual, thoughtful expression gave him an appearance quite clerical, while his rich and resonant voice, and grave, deliberate enunciation constantly suggested pulpit eloquence. Even as a boy he was serious and studious, and as he approached manhood his mind became filled with noble ideas regarding the uplifting of mankind. He became an idealist, and, not content with mere words, carried his theories into the New York slums, doing more than his share in the work of rescuing the degraded and unfortunate. He felt within a call to the ministry, and, on taking holy orders, had entered upon his duties with all the impassioned fervor of a zealot. To established dogmas he paid little heed. Christ was his Church. He tried to model his own life after that of the humble Nazarene. But he soon realized the impossibility of leading a consistent Christ-like life amid twentieth-century conditions. He found no trace of Christ anywhere. Within the Church itself there was not only an unholy traffic in preferments, but he found his fellow clergy, curates, rectors, bishops at war among themselves, self-seeking, greedy for power and money. The men and women in his congregations were envious, selfish, malicious, hypocritical. It made him sick at heart, and when he found that he could no longer reconcile the inconsistencies of spiritual truths to his intellectual point of view, he left the Church and took up the study of law. Admitted to the Bar, he began to practice in New York, but only with indifferent success. In this career, also, his conscience proved a stumbling block. He soon discovered that men employed him not to teach them how to obey the law, but how to evade it. Again he rebelled. He refused cases that did violence to his principles no matter how profitable they might be. He declined to defend law breakers whom he knew to be guilty. Those persons of whose innocence he was assured, he would defend with all the energy and skill at his command, giving his services gratuitously to those who could not afford to pay, and in the court-room his outbursts of eloquence seldom failed to convince the jury. Thus for years he plodded on according to his conscience. He was not rich. Such rare triumphs as he scored in the courts could not make him wealthy. A long spell of hard work had caused a breakdown in his health, and on his physician's advice he had taken a trip to Europe. In Paris he had run across Paula Marsh whose acquaintance he had made in America.
He had first met her when she was doing Settlement work in New York's Ghetto. A consistent altruist, even after he began to practice law, he did not lose his interest in the splendid organizations which seek to improve the conditions of the poor. He found Paula the leader of a group of ardent young women—all girls of easy circumstances, yet willing to forego social pleasures, and spend their days in congested districts, visiting filthy tenements reeking with disease-laden air, in order to alleviate human suffering and bring a ray of comfort to unfortunates who had almost abandoned hope. This, mused the lawyer, was true Christianity. He found that Paula had convictions and ideas which were in sympathy with his own views and this naturally drew them together. As the intimacy grew Leon Ricaby began to nourish in his heart the hope that one day he could make Paula his wife, but the wish thus far, at least, had found no response in his companion. She enjoyed the society of this man who had struggled and suffered, whose ideals had been shattered. She admired him for his moral courage in living up to his principles, but that he expected she might ever be more to him than a friend had never for an instant entered her thoughts. A good friend he certainly had been. When her mother died he alone consoled her in her sorrow, and now that this new crisis had arisen in her life—the sudden death of her father, necessitating her immediate return to America—he stood ready to assist her again with his advice and protection.
"Well—where have you been all morning?" she asked lightly.
"Running all over Paris," he answered. "I've seen the house agent and arranged for the cancellation of the lease of your apartment. I've been to the steamship office and booked our passages. We sail on the Touraine next Saturday."