"It doesn't matter, I said. The real infidelity was in the way you treated my father, day to day, the nagging, belittlement, the wearing down, little needles of disparagement, mental castration--but I don't think you ever managed that, I think he stayed a man. I was seven when he died--you think I couldn't feel what you were doing to him, and can't remember it? I do. Even more I think of how you've gone on since then, trying to destroy him for me--why, in your view nothing he ever did was good, or wise, or even honorable. Isn't that why you cut me off from Aunt Cora Winwood--because she knew better? Mother, he was one of the gentle ones--a fault if you like--is that what you held against him? That he couldn't black your eye when you needed it? Mother, I have three paintings he did to please himself, escape from commercial work. Just three. He must have done a great deal that was never sold. There must have been sketches, unfinished things, portfolios put aside. I never asked you this before, afraid of the answer I think: what became of that work?" "I simply will not endure any more of this." "What became of my father's work?" "Oh, if you mean--well, when we moved here from New York, and there was so much--" "I was right then. You threw it away?" "If you will control yourself and listen reasonably: yes, your father did leave certain drawings and paintings which were very obviously done to please himself, as you put it. They were--I am sorry, Callista--they were vile. No one could call me a prude, but there are certain limits--" "Now it's out." "Callista, I must ask--" "They were all destroyed, all his visions? Everything beyond the level of, say, the Thursday Society--destroyed? Everything? You didn't save one charcoal sketch, one line drawing, one bit of a doodle on scratch paper? If you did I'll stay, to beg you for it--or steal it if I can. I want nothing else from you, ever, but for one scrap of my father's work I'd go on my knees." "Callista, you are out of your mind." "'Mother, for love of grace, lay not that flattering unction to your soul, that not your trespass but my madness speaks.'" "Oh, this morbid dramatizing, this neurotic--quoting 'Hamlet' at me as if I--are you _laughing_?"