face ardent and friendly to the world and thinking to herself of the
double blue in his eyes, the old Saxon blue of battle and the old Saxon
blue of the minstrel, also.

It was the evening meal that always brought them together after the
separation of the day, and he was at once curious to hear how everything
had gone at the art school. With some unsold papers under his arm he had
walked with her to the entrance, a new pang in his breast about her that
he did not understand: for one thing she looked so plain, so common. At
the door-step she had stopped and kissed him and bade him good-by. Her
quiet quivering words were:

"Go home, dear, by way of the cathedral."

If he took the more convenient route, it would lead him into one of the
city's main cross streets, beset with dangers. She would be able to sit
more at peace through those hours of posing if she could know that he
had gone across the cathedral grounds and then across the park as along
a country road bordered with young grass and shrubs in bloom and forest
trees in early leaf. She wished to keep all day before her eyes the
picture of him as straying that April morning along such a country
road--sometimes the road of faint far girlhood memories to her.

Then with a great incomprehensible look she had vanished from him. But
before the doors closed, he, peering past her, had caught sight of the
walls inside thickly hung with portraits of men and women in rich
colors and in golden frames. Into this splendid world his mother had
vanished, herself to be painted.

Now as he began ravenously to eat his supper he wished to hear all about