“No. But, then, I never saw a real dancer. Father has told me about Isadora Duncan and her wonderful dancing. And there’s Ruth St. Denis, too! But he liked Isadora better.” She went on then to tell Grandam how her father had put her, dancing, into all of his pictures. “I’m in ‘Noon’ too,” she said. “But they’re not pictures of me, you understand. Not portraits. You do understand?” “Yes, of course, they’re not pictures of you; they are snatches at the idea of you. But you’ve come just in the nick of time, Ariel. I might have got away, with you in the house, and never known you.” “You are going away!” Ariel’s fingers closed again on the scarf, as if to clutch Grandam back. “Where? How soon?” “I’m going to die. Quite soon, the doctors think. But you got here first. And now I can be a messenger to your father from you. You will bring us together, perhaps. Do you think we shall get along?” Ariel was not grave. She was merry. Oh, this was no old lady with dangerous heart disease, but a vibrant, swift-footed friend whom she was holding back from departure with force, by this piece of clutched drapery. “Do you know,” Grandam told her, “when I was a little girl and taken on train journeys, I’d look out of the windows at other children playing in dooryards, walking along roads, and sitting on fences waving at my train. And I’d wonder how they could bear being left behind, not being in a train. Do all children in trains feel that way, looking out of coach windows? I suspect they do. Well, Ariel, I’m in the same case now. I’m on the train, actually off, on a journey, and all the rest of you are like those other children. The nearest you can come to my adventure is to sit on the country fences and wave me past. And it’s more glorious than exciting because at the end of this journey there will be people I love and haven’t seen for almost a life-time. Those hands—these that you asked about, Ariel—will be there, I believe, to open the coach door.... Do you wonder that I pity all you children, left behind, out of the journey? But not you, Ariel! You aren’t left. You are more like a darting swallow at the train window, keeping up for a little way.” “Yes,” Ariel cried. “Put out your wrist, Grandam! I’ll light on it. I’ll stay till the wind blows me off!” Then they smiled at each other and during the instant of the smile their friendship mellowed as though the instant had been an entire life-time. “But we’re forgetting about ‘Noon,’” Grandam reminded Ariel. “I’ll go with you now to look for it.” “Look for it? But don’t you know where it is? I thought you said you knew.” “It’s in the attic across the hall. It mayn’t be just in plain sight, though. But we’ll find it and bring it in here and hang it above the mantel.”