“Siccome eterna vita e veder dio,
    Ne piu si brama, ne bramar piu lice;”

and at such moments he began to think that he was himself Petrarch, and that to repeat to his Laura the next two verses of the sonnet had become the destiny of his life.

So the weeks ran on until, after a month of hard work, the last days of January saw the two figures nearly completed.  When in due time the meaning of St. Luke became evident, Esther and Catherine waited in fear to see how Wharton would take the liberty on which they had so rashly ventured.  As the likeness came out more strongly, he stopped one morning before it, when Esther, after finishing her own task, was working on Mr. Hazard’s design.

“By our lady of love!” said Wharton, with a start and a laugh; “now I see what mischief you three have been at!”

“The church would not have been complete without it,” said Esther timidly.

For several minutes Wharton looked in silence at the St. Cecilia and at the figure which now seemed its companion; then he said, turning away:  “I shall not be the first unworthy saint the church has canonized.”

Esther drew a long breath of relief; Catherine started up, radiant with delight; and thus it happens that on the walls of St. John’s, high above the world of vanities beneath them, Wharton stands, and will stand for ages, gazing at Catherine Brooke.

Now that the two saints were nearly finished, Esther became a little depressed.  This church life, like a bit of religious Bohemianism and acted poetry, had amused her so greatly that she found her own small studio dull.  She could no longer work there without missing the space, the echoes, the company, and above all, the sense of purpose, which she felt on her scaffolding.  She complained to Wharton of her feminine want of motive in life.

“I wish I earned my living,” she said.  “You don’t know what it is to work without an object.”

“Much of the best work in the world,” said he, “has been done with no motive of gain.”

“Men can do so many things that women can’t,” said she.  “Men like to work alone.  Women cannot work without company.  Do you like solitude?”

“I would like to own a private desert,” he answered, “and live alone in the middle of it with lions and tigers to eat intruders.”

“You need not go so far,” said she.  “Take my studio!”

“With you and Miss Brooke in the neighborhood?  Never!”

“We will let you alone.  In a week you will put your head out of the door and say:  ‘Please come and play jack-straws with me!’”

Catherine was not pleased at the thought that her usefulness was at an end.  She had no longer a part to play unless it were that of duenna to Esther, and for this she was not so well fitted as she might have been, had providence thought proper to make her differently.  Indeed, Esther’s anxiety to do her duty as duenna to Catherine was becoming so sharp that it threatened to interfere with the pleasure of both.  Catherine did her best to give her friend trouble.