She was surprised to find that a certain accuracy as well as facility of touch had not left her, in spite of stiffened fingers and lack of practice. For her colour sense she claimed no credit; it was born with her. But after the outline took shape and she began to paint and give it texture, she dropped her brush again as the words of Lorenz seemed whispered in her ears, “You have not yet had the awakening, for it you must wait; it is the same with me; you must interpret your vision and see it on the canvas before you can create; but first of all you must know and feel, even if you suffer.” The awakening had not come to her, and still she waited; did she not now know and feel, and had she not suffered enough? The stiff geranium cramped in its pot bore her no message to interpret, and as a snow-squall darkened her window she cast the brush aside. Shivering at the utter silence of the house, she fled to her room and, throwing herself face downward on her bed, was abandoning herself to the spirits of darkness, when the thought of her other self, radiating light as Lorenz had painted her, crossed her wild mood, checking it, and she lay quite still until her pounding heart calmed to its regular beating, when bodily fatigue claimed its dole and she fell asleep. When she awoke it was after five o’clock; the squall had passed away and sunset light was warming the whole sky, even taking the chill from the full moon, which it had worn on its apparent rise from the river ice. Below stairs everything was as she had left it, and yet a different atmosphere pervaded the place, and the tension left her throat. The Cub came in with the news, at which he seemed to think she would rejoice, that Robert Stead was better and would be out again on the morrow. Her mother expressed unfeigned pleasure, and Brooke was almost ashamed of the fact that she had for the moment forgotten that he was ill. Yet she always enjoyed his visits and watched for them, for he was a travelled and well-read man, and, when off his guard, most entertaining, and not without a certain compelling magnetism.