Kent, for his part, did not attempt to realise the charm that made his fingers close daily on the handle of the studio door. He accepted the offered friendship, and returned it as frankly as it was given. It became as natural to stop at the studio, before mounting to his attics on his return home from the Museum, as to burst into the South Kensington “monastery” for a midnight rubber. Variety, fresh interests, were brought into his life, vivid as it was with darling hopes and full working energies. It was refreshing to come once again into the sphere, familiar and dear to him during his father's lifetime, of practical art. It was something for him to look forward to, during his tramp home--the stage nearer completeness effected during a day's work in an artistic creation. Gradually, in his blunt, paternal way, he constituted himself the censor of Clytie's work, criticising irregularities, suggesting treatment. There grew within him, too, a brotherly kindness towards Winifred, who looked forward also to his afternoon visit, when she would shyly uncover the small canvas and receive with a gratified flush his meed of appreciation. He arrived after the tea-things had been cleared away, when the day's work was over, in the twilight hour, outstaying Winifred a short while, whose evening family meal was half an hour before Clytie's dinner. It was in these short periods of companionship, when they were alone together, that, unconsciously to themselves, the finer touches were added to the broader intimacy that the previous half hour had brought one step further in development. Piece by piece, by means of a reference here, a petulant outburst there, he grew familiar with the ambitions and struggles of her past life. He was quick to catch a certain note of disappointment. She had not yet become a great artist, was defiantly certain that she could never be one. “Of course you won't if you use your art as a stepping-stone to life,” he said one day. She marked the saying, resolving, however, half rebelliously to make him belie his words in the days to come. She, too, gathered from him the nature of his hope and aspirations, wondered at the cheerful selflessness with which he contemplated the work that would bring him neither name nor fame, nor the things that many men desire. One day he took Clytie and Winifred up to his attic museum, pleased as a boy to show them his treasures. Winifred praised the bright neatness of his arrangements. He confessed guiltily that he had been “tidying up”--a process that had cost him the whole of the previous Sunday. Many of his pictures had been left him by his father, particularly his collection of Aldegravers, over which he fondly lingered, lamenting that the old days of pure design were over, and railing at the mercenary spirit of modern art. He counselled Clytie to study the little masters for her book illustrating. She would learn restraint, abstraction.