Pierre looked at them
again with a strange interest,--they were like the faces of living
friends who welcomed him back to Tilly after years of absence.
Pierre entered a well-remembered apartment which he knew to be the
favorite sitting-room of the Lady de Tilly. He walked hastily
across it to look at a picture upon the wall which he recognized
again with a flush of pleasure.
It was the portrait of Amelie painted by himself during his last
visit to Tilly. The young artist, full of enthusiasm, had put his
whole soul into the work, until he was himself startled at the vivid
likeness which almost unconsciously flowed from his pencil. He had
caught the divine upward expression of her eyes, as she turned her
head to listen to him, and left upon the canvas the very smile he
had seen upon her lips. Those dark eyes of hers had haunted his
memory forever after. To his imagination that picture had become
almost a living thing. It was as a voice of his own that returned
to his ear as the voice of Amelie. In the painting of that portrait
Pierre had the first revelation of a consciousness of his deep love
which became in the end the master passion of his life.
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