"She is very beautiful," commented Ned. Then, looking at it more closely:
"Do you know that somehow, although it's not like her, this reminds me of
Nellie?"
"I knew you'd say that," remarked Connie, swinging round on the music stool so as to reach the keys again and striking a note or two softly. "It has got Nellie's presentment, whatever you call it. I noticed it the first time I saw Nellie. That was how we happened to speak first. Harry noticed it, too, without my having said a word to him. They might be sisters, only Nellie's naturally more self-reliant and determined and has had a hard life of it, while she"—nodding at the miniature—"had been nursed in rose-leaves up to the time it was taken."
"I don't see just where the likeness comes in," said Ned, trying to analyse the portrait.
"It's about the eyes and the mouth particularly, as well as a general similitude," explained Connie.
"As I tell Nellie, she's got a vicious way of setting her lips, so," and Mrs. Stratton, mimicking, drew the corners of her mouth down in Nellie's style. "Then she draws her brows down till altogether she looks as though the burden of the whole world was on her. But underneath she has the same gentle mouth and open eyes and artist forehead as the picture and one feels it. It's very strange, don't you know, that Geisner never seemed to notice it and yet he generally notices everything. After all, I don't know that it is so strange. It's human nature."
"Geisner?" said Ned, clumsily, having nothing particular to say. "Has he seen it?"
"Once or twice," observed Connie. "It belongs to him. He leaves it with me. That's how Harry's seen it and you. It's the only thing he values so he takes care of it by never having it about him, you know," she added, in the flippant way that hid her feelings.
"I suppose it is—that it's—it's the girl he—" stumbled Ned, beginning to understand suddenly.
"That's her," said Connie, strumming some louder notes. "She died. They had been married a few days. She was taken ill, very ill. He left her, when her life was despaired of. She would have him go, too. She got better a little but losing him killed her."
Ned gazed at the portrait, speechless. What were his troubles, his grief, his sorrows, beside those of the man who had loved and lost so! Nellie at least lived. At least he had still the hope that in the years to come he and she might mate together. His thoughts flew back to Geisner's talk on Love on the garden terrace, in the bright afternoon sunshine. Truly Geisner's had been the Love that elevated not the Lust that pulled down. The example nerved him like fresh air. The pain that had dumbed his thoughts of Nellie passed from him.