“I didn’t know what had got into her. Of course I blame myself. I ought to have followed it out. I might have prevented things. But I was annoyed and she saw it, and she——” Miss Howe twinkled. “She wouldn’t let you be annoyed with her long. What did she do with you, Anita?” “She? I don’t know what you mean. We changed the subject. And as a matter of fact I was much occupied at the time with the _Anthology_.” She paused. “She had excellent taste,” said Anita regretfully. “Naturally I reserved to myself the final decision, but——” “Just so,” said Mr. Flood. “Be quiet, Jasper.” The blonde lady’s draperies dusted his shoulder intimately. “She’d brought me a delicious thing of Lady Nairn’s, I remember, that I’d overlooked. And from talking of the _Anthology_ we came, somehow, to talking about me. Yes—” Anita gave an embarrassed half laugh—“She began to talk to me, turning the tables as it were—about myself. She’s never, in all the years I’d known her, taken such a tone. Astonishing! As if—as if I were the younger.” She stared at them, as one combating an unuttered criticism. “I—liked it,” said Anita defiantly. “There was nothing impertinent. It was heartening. She made me feel that one person in the world, at least, knew me—knew my work. I realized, suddenly, that while I had been studying her, she must have been studying me, that she understood my capacities, my limitations, my possibilities, almost as well as I did myself. The relief of it—indescribable! She was extraordinarily plain-spoken. As a rule, you know, I thought her manner——” “Insincere?” said the Baxter girl. “Yes, I’ve heard people say that.” “It had that effect. It didn’t seem possible that she could like everyone as much as she made them think she did. But with me, at least, she was always frankness itself. She believes, you know,—she believed, that is, that all my work so far, even the _Anthology_ and the _Famous Women_ series, not to mention the lighter work, is still preliminary: that my——” she hesitated—“my master-piece, she called it, was still to come. She said that, though she appreciated all my work, I hadn’t ‘found myself.’ Yes! from that child to me it was amusing. But right, you know. She said that my line, whether I dealt with a period or a person, would always be critical, but that I’d never had a big success because so far I’d been merely critical: that I’d never become identified with my subject: that I’d always remained aloof—inhuman. Yes, she said that. A curious theory—but it interested me. But she said that it was only the real theme I needed, the engrossing subject. She said that my chance would come: that ‘she felt it in her bones.’ I can hear her voice now—‘Don’t you worry, Nita! It’ll come to you one day. A big thing. Biography, I shouldn’t wonder. And I shall sit and say—I told you so—I told you so!’ Yes, she talked like that. Oh, it’s nothing when I repeat it, but if you knew how it seemed to pour new life into me. It was the belief in her voice!”