had no eyes for Clare's irregular features. But to-day something in Clare's pose had recalled the Dutch pictures, and in a flash she had understood, and wondered at her blindness. Miss Durand was right: the drawn, grey faces and rigid outlines had beauty, had charm--the charm of her stern smile.... The saints were hedged with lilies, and she, too, had had white flowers before her, that filled the air with the smell of the marvellous Roman church at Westminster.... The painted ladies were Madonnas--mothers--and Miss Hartill, too, had worn for a moment their protective look, half fierce, half tender.... Why was it? What has made her so kind? Not only to-day, but always? The girls feared her, some of them; those that she did not like talked of her temper and her tongue; Rose Levy hated her; even Agatha and Marion, and all of them, were a little frightened, though they adored.... Louise was never frightened.... How could one be frightened of one so kind and wonderful? She could say what she liked to Miss Hartill, and be sure that she would understand.... It was like being in the attic, talking aloud.... Mother would have been like that.... If it could be.... Louise, her chin in her doubled fists, launched out upon her sea of make-believe. If it could be.... If it were possible, that Mother--not Mamma, cheery, obtuse Mamma of nursery and parlour--but Mother, the shadow of the attic--had come back? All things are possible to him that believeth: and Mr. Chesterton had said there was no real reason why tulips should not grow on oaks.... Heaps of people--all India--believed in reincarnation, and there was _The Gateless Barrier_ and _The Dead Leman_ for proof.... Might it not be? The idea was intoxicating. She did not actually believe in it, but she played with it, wistfully, letting her imagination run riot. She wove fantastic variations on the themes "why not," "perhaps," "who knows." She was but thirteen and very lonely.