In his little white bed, a subdued Raymond sobbed out repentance, in long-drawn gusts. “Oh, mother dear, I didn’t mean to spoil father’s lovely lady, I didn’t, I didn’t!” His mother said to herself, in fine disdain of human decisions, “And this poor suffering child must not be told what a lucky thing for him his badness really is; he must not find out that his disgraceful act has put into our family coffers enough to earn him his new pony!” She marvelled at the complexities, nay, the complicities of parenthood. And Raymond, soon to be cast up safely into dreamland on the ebbing tide of remorse, repeated, in a diminuendo of infantine rhythms, “Mademoiselle ast me so very _suddingly_ something I couldn’t know—I only wanted to see how the lady would look, with whiskers—I made ’em just like Mr. Smith’s at the grocery-store—The clay felt so curious under my fingers—” THE YOUNG LADY IN BLUE As my wife says, I am by nature unduly sensitive to beauty. You would hardly expect this fault in a sculptor—you who perhaps judge all sculptors from the war memorials you have seen. And with me, the worst of it is, I am even more susceptible to color than to form. My long acquaintance with form has put me on my guard against its wiles, and my joy in beautiful shapes is forever enhanced by the free play of my critical faculty. But in the presence of lovely color, I am unarmed, weak-kneed. All I can do is to take pleasure in it, for I do not know enough about it to be critical, in any satisfying way. This explains why I fell, and fell far, for the young lady in blue. I admit that I would not have done for Senator Bullwinkle just what I did for her.