the front porch.

There was but one question that was left to be disputed between us.
Margaret still believed I was an artist, all-undeveloped.

"Those sunbeams"--

"I had nothing to do with them. They married golden threads that seemed
kindred to them."

"It is not true. Sunbeams cannot exist without the sun. Your magnetic
power, perhaps, attracted the true sunbeam, and you recreated others."

She fancies, if I would only devote myself to Art, I might become an
American Murillo, and put a Madonna upon canvas.

But before we carried the new sunshine into the old house, I had been
summoned again by Mr. Clarkson. Another wonderful piece of carpeting had
gone out from the works, discovered by our agent before it had left our
warehouse. It was the Water-Lily pattern,--lilies sitting among green
leaves with sunshine playing in and out and among them. So dazzling it
seemed, that it shed a light all round the darkened walls of the
warehouse. It was priceless, he thought, a perfect unique. Better,
almost, that never such a pattern should appear again. It ought to
remain the only one in the world.

And it did so remain. The rival establishment built a new chimney to
their mill, which shut out completely all sunshine or hope of sunshine
from our narrow windows. This was accomplished before the next May, and
I showed Mr. Clarkson how utterly impossible it was for the most