what God meant to others. To this she strove to be true, and not
to hurt nor vex. And how little she really knew of her mother,
and of how much was conjecture and surmise, she was unaware; for
it was through many years she had erected this mother-myth.

Yet was it all myth? She resented the doubt with quick jealousy,
and, opening the bottom drawer of the chest, drew forth a
battered portfolio. Out rolled manuscripts, faded and worn, and
arose a faint far scent of sweet-kept age. The writing was
delicate and curled, with the quaint fineness of half a century
before. She read a stanza to herself:

"Sweet as a wind-lute's airy strains
Your gentle muse has learned to sing,
And California's boundless plains
Prolong the soft notes echoing."

She wondered, for the thousandth time, what a windlute was; yet
much of beauty, much of beyondness, she sensed of this dimly
remembered beautiful mother of hers. She communed a while, then
unrolled a second manuscript. "To C. B.," it read. To Carlton
Brown, she knew, to her father, a love-poem from her mother.
Saxon pondered the opening lines:

"I have stolen away from the crowd in the groves,
Where the nude statues stand, and the leaves point and shiver
At ivy-crowned Bacchus, the Queen of the Loves,
Pandora and Psyche, struck voiceless forever."

This, too, was beyond her. But she breathed the beauty of it.