She went readily enough--she was always eager to go somewhere in a pathetic hope that some new excitement, adventure, would await her. We walked to the gallery, through the gay absorbed crowd on the avenue; and as we moved among them, the chattering gaiety with which we had left her aunt's, fell from her, the lines deepened about her mouth, and finally she fell silent. Almost no one was in the little gallery. I led her to the central bench, and we sat down facing the picture that I had brought her to see: A woman in a muslin gown holding a child. I guessed how the Madonnas, in their exquisite absorption and in radiance and in crimson and blue would have for her little to say, as a woman to a woman. But this girl, in the simple line and tone of every day, with a baby in her arms, seemed to me to hold a great fact, and to offer it. Lena looked at her, and her face did not change. I waited, without saying anything, feeling certain that whatever I said she was in a mood to contradict. So she spoke first. "It looks grand," she said, "till you think of the work of washin' and ironin' the baby's clothes. And her own. You can bet I shan't keep it in white." "Look at the baby's hand," I said, "around her one finger." It was at that moment that the owner of the little gallery came in, with a possible patron. They stood near us, looking at a landscape by the artist of the Madonna. " ... a wise restraint," he was saying. "Restraint is easy enough--it is like closing one's mouth all the time. The thing is to close it wisely! It is not so much the things that he elects not to include in the composition as it is his particular fashion of omission--without self-consciousness, with no pride of choice. I should say that of all the young artists now working in America, he comes the closest to giving place to the modern movements, seeing them as contributions but not often as ultimates--" "I'm goin'," said Lena. I followed her. On the sidewalk, she tossed her head and laughed unpleasantly. "No such talk as that guy was giving in mine," she said. "He feels smart--that's what ails him. Cossy, I hate folks like that. I hate 'em when they pretend to know so much...." "What if they do know, Lena?" I said. "Then I don't want to be with 'em," she answered. "That's easy, ain't it? Sometimes I almost hate you. Ain't they some store where they's a basket of trimmin' remnants we could look at?" I took her to a shop, and she walked among the shining stuffs, forgetting me. She loved the gowns on the models. She felt contempt for no one who was dressed more beautifully than she--only for those who "knew more" than she. I thought how surely beauty and not knowledge is the primal teacher, universally welcomed. Beauty is power. But the remnant basket did not please her, and we stepped into the street to seek another shop. And standing beside a motor door, close to the way we passed, were Mrs. Carney and John Ember.