Isabelle was straining with clasped hands and parted lips, gazing amazedly upon a threefold screen shielding the hearthplace. The panels bore each a female figure, but the central one was that which had engrossed the young artist’s attention to the exclusion of the others; and its design was a golden-haired child in a delicate drapery of heliotrope tint reaching upward to pull the bunches of wistaria blooms from a vine wreathed above her head. The scheme of the coloring, even to the framing of the screen, was of heliotrope and gold, and the effect was of indescribable light and joy.
“Ah! I see you like it! We think it is beautiful, beautiful! and my friend says that though they do not know the artist’s name now, the Art Directors will make every effort to hunt her up and help her on; for I suppose it must be a woman, since this is a Women’s Society.”
Still Isabelle did not speak, her words seemed utterly to have deserted her; but there was one at hand who was never at a loss for language, and with a rush and whirl Beatrice came waltzing into the great room, her eyes dancing as gayly as her feet, and her lips bubbling over with laughter.
“Oh! I couldn’t stand it any longer! I thought I should just burst with impatience, so I told Mr. Brook he would have to excuse me a minute, whether or no, and here I am! Now, Miss Isabelle Beckwith, what have you to say for yourself? Didn’t I have a surprise for you, and isn’t it just too glorious to be true?”
“I—I can’t believe it! Even yet!”
“Well, I should like to know what has come over you two children!” exclaimed Miss Joanna, utterly at sea for an explanation of this odd behavior.
Bonny stopped dancing, went up to her sister, threw her arms impulsively about Isabelle’s neck, and kissed her heartily. Then she asked, “Shall I tell her, or will you, dear?”
Belle blushed a little, but her eyes shone with pride as she turned toward Miss Brook. “Since I have heard your opinion of the panel when you did not know who painted it, I suppose I may tell you that your words made me very proud. That ‘Wistaria’ is my own work.”
“My goodness! Is it possible! And to think that I never dreamed it! Yet why should I? The only signature anywhere about the picture is a blade of grass in one corner.”
“Yes,” laughed Isabelle, now as gay as she had been speechless before, “that was the only one I dared use. I am such a mere beginner in art, that I feel as if I really know nothing yet! Only I feel it within me—strong, strong, strong!—that I shall sometime be able to put a little of myself, my dreams and ambitions, into visible form! Oh! I am so grateful and so humble. I am ready now, dear Miss Joanna, to say with you, ‘God is so loving, so generous!’”