her white frock. But her face was grave.

"I thought just now"--she said, almost timidly,--"that you were bored by
my asking you to show us those things. Are you? Please tell me. I didn't
mean to get in the way of anything you were doing."

"Bored! Not in the least. Here they are, all ready for you. Come in."

She saw two or three large portfolios distributed on chairs, and one or
two drawings already on exhibition. Her face cleared.

"Oh, what a heavenly thing!"

She made straight for a large drawing of the Val d'Arno in spring, and
the gap in the mountains that leads to Lucca, taken from some high point
above Fiesole. She knelt down before it in an ecstasy of pleasure.

"Mummy and I were there two years before the war. I do believe you came
too?" She looked up, smiling, at the face above her.

It was the first time she had ever appealed to her childish recollections
of him in any other than a provocative or half-resentful tone. He could
remember a good many tussles with her in her frail mother's interest,
when she was a long-legged, insubordinate child of twelve. And when
Helena first arrived at Beechmark, it had hurt him to realize how
bitterly she remembered such things, how grossly she had exaggerated
them. The change indicated in her present manner, soothed his tired,
nervous mood. His smile answered her.

"Yes, I was there with you two or three days. Do you remember the wild