“I don’t know--yes. Uncle Fred helped me, of course. He knows a lot about Oriental pottery. I called him ‘Uncle’ after father died,” Anne explained, “because there’s nothing else to call a guardian, is there?” On the wall Kate noticed a rough but vivid oil-sketch of a branch of magnolias. She went up to it, attracted by its purity of colour. “I like that,” she said. Anne’s eyes deepened. “Do you? I did it.” “You, dear? I didn’t know you painted.” Kate felt herself suddenly blushing; the abyss of all she didn’t know about her daughter had once more opened before her, and she just managed to murmur: “I mean, not like _this_. It’s very broad--very sure. You must have worked....” The girl laughed, caught in the contagion of her mother’s embarrassment. “Yes, I’ve worked hard--I care for it a great deal.” Kate sighed and turned from the picture. The few words they had exchanged--the technical phrases she had used--had called up a time when the vocabulary of the studio was forever in her ears, and she wanted, at that moment, to escape from it as quickly as she could. Against the opposite wall was a deep sofa, books and a reading-lamp beside it. Kate paused. “That’s just where your crib used to stand!” She turned to the fireplace with an unsteady laugh. “I can see you by the hearth, in your little chair, with the fire shining through your bush of hair, and your toys on the shelf in front of you. You thought the sparks were red birds in a cage, and you used to try to coax them through the fender with bits of sugar.” “Oh, did I? You darling, to remember!” The girl put an arm about Kate. It seemed to the mother, as the young warmth flowed through her, that everything else had vanished, and that together they were watching the little girl with the bush of hair coaxing the sparks through the fender. * * * * *