“You promise not to change the idea?”

“I promise to look at you as long as you look at me,” said Wharton gloomily.

Meanwhile Esther had a talk with Mr. Hazard which left her more in doubt than ever as to what she had best do.  He urged her to begin something new and to do it in a more strenuous spirit.

“You are learning from Wharton,” said he.  “Why should you stop at the very moment when you have most to gain?”

“I am learning nothing but what I knew before,” she answered sadly.  “He can teach only grand art and I am fit only for trifles.”

“Try one more figure!”

Esther shook her head.

“My Cecilia is a failure,” she went on.  “Mr. Wharton said it would be, and he was right.  I should do no better next time, unless I took his design and carried it out exactly as he orders.”

“One’s first attempt is always an experiment.  Try once more!”

“I should only spoil your church.  In the middle of your best sermon your audience would see you look up here and laugh.”

“You are challenging compliments.”

“What I could do nicely would be to paint squirrels and monkeys playing on vines round the choir, or daisies and buttercups in a row, with one tall daisy in each group of five.  That is the way for a woman to make herself useful.”

“Be serious!”

“I feel more solemn than Mr. Wharton’s great figure of John of Patmos.  I am going home to burn my brushes and break my palette.  What is the use of trying to go forward when one feels iron bars across one’s face?”

“Be reasonable, Miss Dudley!  If Wharton is willing to teach, why not be willing to learn?  You are not to be the judge.  If I think your work good, have I not a right to call on you for it?”

“Oh, yes!  You have a right to call, and I have a right to refuse.  I will paint no more religious subjects.  I have not enough soul.  My St. Cecilia looks like a nursery governess playing a waltz for white-cravated saints to dance by.”  There was a tone of real mortification in Esther’s voice as she looked once more at the figure on the wall, and felt how weak it seemed by the side of Wharton’s masculine work.  Then she suddenly changed her mind and did just what he asked:  “If Mr. Wharton will consent, I will begin again, and paint it all over.”

A woman could easily have seen that she was torn in opposite directions by motives of a very contrary kind, but Mr. Hazard did not speculate on this subject; he was glad to carry his point, and let the matter rest there.  It was agreed that the next morning Wharton should decide upon the proper course to be taken, and if he chose to reject her figure, she should begin it again.  Esther and Catherine went home, but Esther was ill at ease.  That her St. Cecilia did not come up to the level of her ambition was a matter of course, and she was prepared for the disappointment.  Whose first attempt in a new style ever paired with