II.


"You remember me, Young Jackson?"

"What do I remember if not you? You are my first remembrance. It was
you who told me that was my name. It was you who told me that on every
twentieth of December my life had a penitential anniversary in it called
a birthday. I suppose the last communication was truer than the first!"

"What am I like, Young Jackson?"

"You are like a blight all through the year to me. You hard-lined, thin-
lipped, repressive, changeless woman with a wax mask on. You are like
the Devil to me; most of all when you teach me religious things, for you
make me abhor them."

"You remember me, Mr. Young Jackson?" In another voice from another
quarter.

"Most gratefully, sir. You were the ray of hope and prospering ambition
in my life. When I attended your course, I believed that I should come
to be a great healer, and I felt almost happy--even though I was still
the one boarder in the house with that horrible mask, and ate and drank
in silence and constraint with the mask before me, every day. As I had
done every, every, every day, through my school-time and from my earliest
recollection."

"What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?"