He had thought perhaps there would come an answering gladness from the Madonna herself and looked into her face to find it. And truly enough it was there. Her eyes, which for centuries had looked questingly forth from the canvas, now drooped and rested upon the baby. Her mouth, so sadly downturned at the corners, had sweetened to a smile of perfect and serene content. But the men will not believe he washed away the sadness of her looks with alcohol and turpentine. "I did not touch the head. I am certain I did not," he repeated. "Then how can you explain----" "Oh, heaven!" he answered. "Put a child in any woman's arms." LENA WRACE By MAY SINCLAIR (From _The Dial_) 1921, 1922 She arranged herself there, on that divan, and I knew she'd come to tell me all about it. It was wonderful, how, at forty-seven, she could still give that effect of triumph and excess, of something rich and ruinous and beautiful spread out on the brocades. The attitude showed me that her affair with Norman Hippisley was prospering; otherwise she couldn't have afforded the extravagance of it. "I know what you want," I said. "You want me to congratulate you." "Yes. I do." "I congratulate you on your courage." "Oh, you don't like him," she said placably. "No, I don't like him at all." "He likes you," she said. "He thinks no end of your painting." "I'm not denying he's a judge of painting. I'm not even denying he can paint a little himself." "Better than you, Roly." "If you allow for the singular, obscene ugliness of his imagination, yes." "It's beautiful enough when he gets it into paint," she said. "He makes beauty. His own beauty." "Oh, very much his own." "Well, _you_ just go on imitating other people's--God's or somebody's." She continued with her air of perfect reasonableness. "I know he isn't good-looking. Not half so good-looking as you are. But I like him. I like his slender little body and his clever, faded face. There's a quality about him, a distinction. And look at his eyes. _Your_ mind doesn't come rushing and blazing out of your eyes, my dear." "No. No. I'm afraid it doesn't rush. And for all the blaze--" "Well, that's what I'm in love with, the rush, Roly, and the blaze. And I'm in love, _for the first time_" (she underlined it) "with a man." "Come," I said, "come." "Oh, _I_ know. I know you're thinking of Lawson Young and Dickey Harper." I was. "Well, but they don't count. I wasn't in love with Lawson. It was his career. If he hadn't been a Cabinet Minister; if he hadn't been so desperately gone on me; if he hadn't said it all depended on me--" "Yes," I said. "I can see how it would go to your head." "It didn't. It went to my heart." She was quite serious and solemn. "I held him in my hands, Roly. And he held England. I couldn't let him drop, could I? I had to think of England." It was wonderful--Lena Wrace thinking that she thought of England.