"Not at all," said Mrs. Gano, with a dignified air. "Your grandfather was merely agreeing with Dr. Johnson that portrait-painting was an improper employment for a woman. 'Public practice of any art and staring in men's faces is very indelicate in a female,'" she quoted, but she smiled again. "If your grandfather had lived, none of you would ever have had a drawing lesson. I am more liberal about these things." Val flashed a covert look at Julia. John Gano and others had filled in the dim outlines of Valeria's life, and the things she had left behind were eloquent in a way their creator never dreamed, and would bitterly have resented. Mrs. Gano was lifting up the desk. "Let me carry it in for you," said Val, preceding her grandmother with the little rosewood box. As she came back Julia heard Val in the hall dismissing poor Emmie and her piano key with short shrift. She closed the door sharply, and confronted her friend with ominous eyes. "How my grandmother can bear to be so much in that room!" "Without a fire on a day like this?" "Yes; but anyhow, it's horrible in there." "I thought you used to love it when she let you in." "Yes, when I was little, and didn't understand. It's full of dilapidated things that belonged to dead people. Ethan's father's fiddle--smashed. My father's patent lamps--none of 'em work. Our grandfather's walking-sticks, very tired-looking, leaning dejected against the wall under a faded dirty picture of the Baptist college he built--it's a Roman Catholic hospital now. And then that thing of Aunt Valeria's--that's the worst of all!" She came nearer, and crouched down on the rug beside her friend. "What do you mean?" "A pile of what used to be modelling clay. It's quite black now, but if you see it in one particular way a face seems to look dimly at you out of the dust, and, oh! it's the sorrowfullest face I ever saw. It's the face of somebody who hadn't a chance." "What is it like?" "My opinion is it's Aunt Valeria's face, but sometimes--sometimes it looks like me." Neither spoke for awhile. Val sat huddled together staring into the blaze. "_She_ used to lie on the rug here before the fire, too." The girl threw back her head like one shaking off an evil dream, but her eye was suddenly arrested. "I wonder what she thought of Mazeppa." "Mazeppa?" echoed Julia. "Yes." The other nodded to the iron bas-relief above the grate. "The first time I heard father talk about natural law, about lines of least resistance and all kinds of horrors (ante-natal tendencies and the rest), I used to think of Mazeppa, and feel I was being bound on the wild horse of the Past and left to the wolves. But I always knew I should escape. It troubles me when I remember that Aunt Valeria didn't. And perhaps she sat here with the same faith I have." She gave a little shiver and stood up. "No, no; of course we've been utterly different from the beginning." "You've changed in the last two years more than anybody I ever knew."