vines that only the merest blur of white clouds and blue hills was visible.... She had worn a gown of duller blue that lay in stiff folds: the bowl of Christmas roses, that mirrored themselves on the dark, polished table, had hidden the papers and the smeared ink-pot. Suddenly Louise remembered some austere Dutch Madonnas over whom delightful, but erratic Miss Durand had lingered, on their last visit to a picture gallery. She called them beautiful. Louise, with fascinated eyes sidling past a wallful of riotous Rubens, to fix on the soap and gentian of a Sasseferato, had wondered if Miss Durand were trying to be funny. She remembered, too, how some of the younger girls, comparing favourites, had called Miss Hartill ugly. She had raged loyally—yet, secretly, all but agreed. With her child's love of pink and white prettiness she had had no eyes for Clare's irregular features. But to-day something in Clare's pose had recalled the Dutch pictures, and in a flash she had understood, and wondered at her blindness. Miss Durand was right: the drawn, grey faces and rigid outlines had beauty, had charm—the charm of her stern smile.... The saints were hedged with lilies, and she, too, had had white flowers before her, that filled the air with the smell of the marvellous Roman church at Westminster.... The painted ladies were Madonnas—mothers—and Miss Hartill, too, had worn for a moment their protective look, half fierce, half tender....

[56]

Why was it? What has made her so kind? Not only to-day, but always? The girls feared her, some of them; those that she did not like talked of her temper and her tongue; Rose Levy hated her; even Agatha and Marion, and[57] all of them, were a little frightened, though they adored.... Louise was never frightened.... How could one be frightened of one so kind and wonderful? She could say what she liked to Miss Hartill, and be sure that she would understand.... It was like being in the attic, talking aloud.... Mother would have been like that.... If it could be....

[57]

Louise, her chin in her doubled fists, launched out upon her sea of make-believe.

If it could be.... If it were possible, that Mother—not Mamma, cheery, obtuse Mamma of nursery and parlour—but Mother, the shadow of the attic—had come back? All things are possible to him that believeth: and Mr. Chesterton had said there was no real reason why tulips should not grow on oaks.... Heaps of people—all India—believed in reincarnation, and there was The Gateless Barrier and The Dead Leman for proof.... Might it not be?

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