purist, who had worried Wharton and the building committee with daily complaints that the character of their work wanted spiritual earnestness, now suddenly, at a word from Miss Dudley, turned about and encouraged her, against Wharton’s orders, to paint a figure, which, if it could be seen, which was fortunately not the case, must seem to any one who cared for such matters, out of keeping with all the work which surrounded it.

“Do you know,” said Esther to Mr. Hazard, “that Mr. Wharton insists on my painting Catherine as though she were forty years old and rheumatic?”

“I know,” he replied, glancing timidly towards the procession of stern and elderly saints and martyrs, finished and unfinished, which seemed to bear up the church walls.  “Do you think she would feel at home here if she were younger or prettier?”

“No!  Honestly, I don’t think she would,” said Esther, becoming bold as he became timid.  “I will paint Cecilia eighty years old, if Mr. Wharton wants her so.  She will have lost her touch on the piano, and her voice will be cracked, but if you choose to set such an example to your choir, I will obey.  But I can’t ask Catherine to sit for such a figure.  I will send out for some old woman, and draw from her.”

“I can’t spare Miss Brooke,” said Hazard hastily.  “The church needs her.  Perhaps you can find some middle way with Wharton.”

“No!  If I am to paint her at all, I must paint her as she is.  There is more that is angelic in her face now, if I could only catch it, than there is in all Mr. Wharton’s figures put together, and if I am to commit sacrilege, I would rather be untrue to Mr. Wharton, than to her.”

“I believe you are right, Miss Dudley.  There is a little look of heaven in Miss Brooke’s eyes.  If you think you can put it into the St. Cecilia, why not try?  If the experiment fails you can try again on another plan.  After all, the drapery is the only part that needs to be very strictly in keeping.”

Thus this despotic clergyman gave way and irritated Wharton, who, having promised to let him decide the dispute, was now suddenly overruled.  He shrugged his shoulders and told Esther in private that he had struggled hard to get permission to do what she was doing, but only the sternest, strongest types would satisfy the church then.  “It was all I could do to get them down to the thirteenth century,” he said; “whenever I begged for beauty of form, they asked me whether I wanted the place to look like a theater.”

“You know they’re quite right,” said Esther.  “It has a terribly grotesque air of theater even now.”

“It is a theater,” growled Wharton.  “That is what ails our religion.  But it is not the fault of our art, and if you had come here a little earlier, I would have made one more attempt.  I would like now, even as it is, to go back to the age of beauty, and put a Madonna in the heart of their church.  The place has no heart.”