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
it. She told him. Part of her experience she kept back, a true part; the
other, no less true, she described. With deft fingers she went over the
somberly woven web of the hours, and plucking here a bright thread and
there a bright thread, rewove these into a smaller picture, on which
fell the day's far-separated sunbeams; the rays were condensed now and
made a solid brightness.

This is how she painted for him a bright picture out of things not many
of which were bright. The teacher of the portrait class, to begin, had
been very considerate. He had arranged that she should leave her things
with the janitor's wife down-stairs, and not go up-stairs and take them
off behind some screens in a corner of the room where the class was
assembled. That would have been dreadful, to have to go behind the
screens to take off her hat and gloves. Then instead of sending word for
her to come up, he himself had come down. As he led the way past the
confusing halls and studios, he had looked back over his shoulder just a
little, to let her know that not for a moment did he lose thought of
her. To have walked in front of her, looking straight ahead, might have
meant that he esteemed her a person of no consequence. A master so walks
before a servant, a superior before an inferior. Out of respect for her,
he had even lessened the natural noisiness of his feet on the bare
floor. If you put your feet down hard in the house, it means that you
are thinking of yourself and not of other people. He had mounted the
stairs slowly lest she get out of breath as she climbed. When he
preceded her into the presence of the class, he had turned as though he
introduced to them his own mother. In everything he did he was really a
man; that is, a gentleman. For being a gentleman is being really a man;
if you are really a man, you _are_ a gentleman.

As for the members of the class, they had been beautiful in their
treatment of her. Not a word had been exchanged with them, but she could
_feel_ their beautiful thoughts. Sometimes when s