"Wait! I must tell you what I remember, but not about this; I mean the earlier time, two years earlier. Let me tell you what I remember of that, and then I'll go. I remember running into the studio, dragging my red fire-engine. Father was on the couch. He'd been working, the big table was littered with his things. He sat up and smiled and held out his arms to me. I climbed into his lap. When he kissed me his face was burning, his hands shaking. I know he talked to me, but the words won't come back. Except 'Draw me a big horse and a little horse.' Then I remember lying belly-down on the floor, working with crayons--the horses, I suppose. And he went out of the room, for quinine probably--he had an allergic reaction to atabrine in the Army, didn't he?" "Something like that. Callista, I can't see--" "It was morning, Mother. Sunlight in that east window. Shining aslant across the things on his work-table. From what I've learned, what I can remember and piece together, I don't believe my father would have been drunk in the morning." "Callista, is this your time of the month?" "No, God damn it." "Really! Callista, I must ask you to control yourself." "I was never colder. I think I must have a fuller memory than most. It comes back, how serious I was about the drawing, at going-on-five. Precocious. I still possess some talent that way." "Callista, as you know, you have a quite considerable talent that way, if you would learn to discipline it, and--well, and outgrow your taste for the unpleasantly morbid and erotic subjects that seem to attract you so much. I have never understood in fact why you chose to be so childishly disagreeable a year ago when I ventured to show some of your--your less controversial drawings to the Thursday Society. Very well, I should have asked your consent, being merely your mother. Now Mrs. Wilberforce, who is after all an art teacher of somewhat wider experience than yours, to say nothing of having written and illustrated a number of altogether charming children's books, Mrs. Wilberforce felt that one or two of those drawings showed distinct promise. Distinct promise." "Yes, Mrs. W.'s a nice lady. O Mother, so much comes back! Spring of 1945--he was invalided home a whole year before then, wasn't he? 1944? Didn't I have him a whole year before my face was burned? Why are you crying? Wasn't it 1944?" "1944? Yes, he came home that year. And to think, she even offered to let you try some illustrations for one of her own books, was willing to instruct you, help you in every possible way!" "Who?--oh, Wilberforce. Yes, she's nice--what a pity the books are garbage. Why are you crying? Cousin Trent? That little man?" "Trent--why, I never--Callista, you are hysterical." "I was never colder. 'Mother, you have my father much offended.'" "What? What are you saying?" "I'm not thinking of Cousin Trent--that doesn't matter. It couldn't matter if you sneaked into the sheets with him a hundred times--" "Callista!"