"Oh," she cried, and it was a cry of pain, "was I once as beautiful as that ?" and burst into tears.
She had found the picture she had been looking for, which she had come to see; it had been there twenty to twenty-five years, and the story of it was as follows.
When she was a young girl her mother took her to the great artist to have her portrait painted, and when the work was at length finished she and her mother went to see it.

The artist put it before them and the mother looked at it, her face expressing displeasure, and said not one word.

Nor did the artist open his lips.

And at last the girl, to break the uncomfortable silence, said, "Where shall we hang it, mother ?" and the lady replied, "Just where you like, my dear, so long as you hang it with the face to the wall." It was an insolent, a cruel thing to say, but the artist did not answer her bitterly; he said gently that she need not take the portrait as it failed to please her, and that in any case he would decline to take the money she had agreed to pay him for the work.

She thanked him coldly and went her way, and he never saw her again.