understood. He watched while she drew from her bureau drawer a box of
paints and some paper. She painted for long hours, day after day through
the winter, while he played beside her with longing eyes on her brushes.
She painted always one thing--flowers--using no pencil, drawing their
shapes with the brush. Her flowers were of many kinds, nearly all strange
to him, but most were roses--pink, yellow, crimson, almost black.
Sometimes their petals flared like wings; sometimes they were close-
furled. Of these paintings he remembered much, but of her speech little,
for she was silent as she worked.

One day his mother put a brush into his hand. The rapture of it was as
sharp and near as to-day's misery. He sat beside her after that for many
days and painted. First he tried to paint a rose, but he had never seen
such roses as her brush drew, and he tired quickly. Then he drew a bird.
His mother nodded and smiled--it was good. After that his memory showed
him the two sitting side by side for weeks, or was it months?--while the
snow lay piled beyond the window--she with her flowers, he with his
birds.

First he drew birds singly, hopping on a branch, or simply standing,
claws and beaks defined. Then he began to make them fly, alone, and again
in groups. Their wings spread across the paper, wider and more
sweepingly. They pointed upward sharply, or lay flat across the page.
Flights of tiny birds careened from corner to corner. They were blue,
gold, scarlet, and white. He left off drawing birds on branches and drew
them only in flight, smudging in a blue background for the sky.

One day by accident he made a dark smudge in the lower left-hand corner
of his page.