round-faced child of fourteen went her way to the end of her page. Then
Miriam had ventured to interrupt and to ask her about the hanging
arrangements, and the child had risen and speaking soft South German had
suggested and poked tip-toeing about amongst the thickly-hung garments
and shown a motherly solicitude over the disposal of Miriam's things.
Miriam noted the easy range of the child's voice, how smoothly it slid
from birdlike queries and chirpings, to the consoling tones of the lower
register. It seemed to leave undisturbed the softly-rounded,
faintly-mottled chin and cheeks and the full unpouting lips that lay
quietly one upon the other before she spoke, and opened flexibly but
somehow hardly moved to her speech and afterwards closed again gradually
until they lay softly blossoming as before.

Emma had gathered up her music when the clothes were arranged, sighing
and lamenting gently, "Ware ich nur zu Hause"--how happy one was at
home--her little voice filled with tears and her cheeks flushed,
"haypie, haypie to home," she complained as she slid her music into its
case, "where all so good, so nice, so beautiful," and they had gone,
side by side, up the dark uncarpeted stone stairs leading from the
basement to the hall. Half-way up, Emma had given Miriam a shy firm hug
and then gone decorously up the remainder of the flight.

The sense of that sudden little embrace recurred often to Miriam during
the course of the first day.

It was unlike any contact she had known--more motherly than her
mother's. Neither of her sisters could have embraced her like that.
She did not know that a human form could bring such a sense of warm
nearness, that human contours could be eloquent--or anyone so sweetly
daring.