She had set briskly to work at her installation. She accepted a few pieces of the proffered furniture--quaint old hand-carved things of incredibly heavy woods; she performed wonders with boxes and chintz; Isio mats enlivened the meerschaum of walls and ceiling, the few pictures and flags left of her college days were hung; red narra boards tied with golden abaca along the walls made a place for her books; a big square severe table, with her blotters, pads, ink-stands, pens, and pencils upon it, took an aspect inviting of studious hours. But when she rested and looked about her for the subtle feeling of coziness and warmth which usually follows such toil, as it must to the birds who have built their nest, she found with consternation that it was not there--the feeling of intimacy, of home, was not there. She changed the petates, she moved the pictures, she hung orchids at the windows, arranged a panoply of native hats and spears over the door, fringed the grass-cloth portières. But it was useless. The feeling would not come. And she realised that it would never come; that all these efforts were puerilities before the great crushing assertion of the land--the grass-dishevelled plaza, the ruined church, glistening in the white sun, the palms, the steaming mountain, the brown populations; that before this tranquil, brooding, all-powerful Presence, all her little defenses of art and adornment shrivelled, dried into dust as cardboard toys in a furnace. It was like hiding behind leaves from God. She turned to her work with an enfevered zeal. She found a tumble-down nipa shed where some twenty half-naked, half-starved, miserable little beings, herded every morning by the municipal police, gathered beneath the stick of a slovenly, dull-eyed man, with a gibberish of English--the native teacher appointed temporarily by the military government. The school supplies had not come yet; there were no charts, no books, no slates, no paper, no pencils. The children squatted on the damp earth, crushed and apathetic. "Well, I can at least love them," she said to herself. It was easy for her to love children. She loved everything that was small--babies, kittens, puppies, birds; and flowers:--she called them baby-flowers when they were satisfyingly little. She taught the children trifles that did not amount to much; but beneath the tenderness of her presence these starved plants began to put forth blossoms. The dark eyes opened in wonder, softened in reverence. One day one of the little girls took her hand going home from school; and after that she was always followed by a dozen demure little maids that took her hand a few steps in turn. She taught the class a song, and since there was not much to do, in the dearth of what was needed, they often sang, in their low, plaintive notes, their eyes fixed upon her in mute adoration. They called her Mathilda, and she thought it very sweet.