CHARMING. 485

ate obliged to run after! You must do it for decency’s sake, for
you ’re sure to be asked when you come back; and then you’re
sure to be told that you’ve omitted to see what was best worth
seeing. I got tired at last of those endless Madonnas: one
seemed to be turning a Madonna oneself!”

“ And what bad living you get!” said Kala.

“Yes,” replied mamma: “no such thing as a honest meat soup.
It’s miserable trash, their cookery.”

And the travelling fatigued Kala: she was always fatigued,
that was the worst of it. Sophy was taken into the house, where
ner presence was a real advantage.

Mamma-in-law acknowledged that Sophy understood both
nousewifery and art, though a knowledge of the latter could not
be expected from a person of her limited means; and she was,
moreover, an honest, faithful girl: she showed that thoroughly
while Kala lay sick—fading away.

Where the case is everything, the case should be strong,
or else all is over. And all cas over with the case-—Kala
died.

“ She was beautiful,” said mamma; “she was quite different
from the antiques, for they are so damaged. A beauty ought to
be perfect, and Kala was a perfect beauty.”

Alfred wept, and mamma wept, and both of them were mourn-
ing. The black dress suited mamma very well, and she wore
mourning the Jongest. Moreover, she had soon to experience
another grief in seeing Alfred marry Sophy, who had no appear-
ance at all.

“He’s gone to the very extreme,” cried mamma-in-law; “he
has gone from the most beautiful to the ugliest, and has forgotten
his first wife. Men have no endurance. My husband was of a
different stamp, and he died before me.”

“ Pygmalion received his Galatea,” said Alfred: “yes, that’s
what they said in the wedding song. I had once really fallen in
love with the beautiful statue, which awoke to life in my arms;
but the kindred soul which Heaven sends down to us, the angel
who can feel and sympathize with and elevate us, I have not
found and won till now. You came, Sophy, not in the glory of
outward beauty, though you are fair, fairer than is needful. The
chief thing remains the chief. You came to teach the sculptor
that his work is but clay and dust, only an outward form in a
fabric that passes away, and that we must seek the essence, the
internal spirit. Poor Kala! ours was but wayfarers’ life. Yonder,
where we shall know each other by sympathy, we shall be half
strangers.” 4

“ That was not lovingly spoken,” said Sophy, “ not spoken like
a true Christian. Yonder, where there is no giving in marriage,
but where, as you say, souls attract each other by sympathy ;
there where everything beautiful developes itself and is eleva‘ 2d,