"Sometimes I get the idea that Randy badgers him, though they're thick as thieves. The boy wouldn't breathe if Randy said it was bad for the lungs." "How long have they been friends?" By quick, nervous, point-blank queries she drew from him all that he knew of this intimacy. She puzzled over it. "Can he know?" She had not meant him to hear this, but he caught the words, and betrayed something like human interest. "Trust Randy for that! I found it out myself. He had Kitty's portrait--Kitty to the life--stunning brush work. Randy has begged the picture of him for a while. I fancy he didn't want it hanging there for others to see. And he found the fellow here one afternoon. Kitty told me. She was nearly taken off her feet by his story but Randy happened in and cooled things down. It's queer, Randy's setting himself to win over the chap. It's a puzzle-mix. I wonder about it sometimes when the light goes." She had listened in consternation, a rage for battle rising in her. She was sure Teevan must have some end in view hurtful to Ewing. Yet this was cunningly hidden. She was still puzzling over this when Sydenham recalled her. He had forgotten Ewing, and studied the red light that fell across the table through a shade of silk. "What fools we are to think of painting shadows! If heaven's the place it's said to be they'll have real shadows put in up tubes, and then--well, _think_ of it!" She laughed at him, her brief laugh, with a sigh to follow. "We must go to the others. But, Herbert, you'll watch him as well as you can, won't you? I feel responsible for him in a way." He hesitated, but the light came. "Oh, you mean Ewing? Of course I'll watch him. I dare say he'll paint some day, after a fashion." He fumbled for the knob and awkwardly opened the door for her. When the men went Mrs. Laithe asked if she might not linger a moment. "Dear Aunt Kitty!" she said, going to the other's chair. "_Old_ Kitty!" she repeated meaningly. The elder woman glanced quickly at her in faint alarm, half questioning, half defiant. "Oh, Aunt Kitty! I know--I _know_! and I must talk of him. I suspected something almost from the first, and then I made sure. But I thought that perhaps no one else would find it out. And he was worth it--he is worth it. I couldn't have left him there, even if I'd been sure that everyone would know. He was a man--he had the right to live." "My child, my child! Oh, you didn't know what you were doing! It was a monstrous thing, an impossible thing!" "He's Kitty's son. You must feel for him." "Feel? What haven't I felt since that day he came here?" There had been a break in her voice, but she went quietly on. "I can't make you know, dear. You've torn me--it will hurt to the end. Can you understand that in a terrible, an unspeakable way, my Kitty is still alive, is near me, and yet is not to be known? But you can't understand it. You've never had a child." "Ah! but I've been one. I know what he would feel."