influential branch
of the family. At the end of three years she had begun to hope, and to
feel the quickening of new powers; and as her nature expanded, her art
took on a subtler quality, a subdued and delicate sensuousness, which,
it must be owned, had very little in common with the flesh and blood of
ordinary humanity.

She was painting steadily, in a pallid fervour of concentrated
excitement, the ease of her pliant hands contrasting with her firm lips
and knitted brows, when Ted burst into the studio, with a thin Gladstone
bag in one hand and a fat portfolio in the other. His face told her of a
crisis in his history; it was humorous, pathetic, deprecating, and
determined, all at once,--not the face of a boy dropping in casually at
tea-time. When asked if anything had gone wrong at the office, he
replied, "Probably--by this time. They lost their brightest ornament
this morning. You see they said--among other things--that it wasn't the
least use my stopping, as I hadn't any head for figures,--which was odd,
considering that it's just with figures I've been most successful." But
Katherine was to judge for herself. He sat down leisurely and began
untying his portfolio. Then he caught sight of "The Witch of Atlas."
"That's going to be a stunning picture, Kathy," said he. He stood before
the canvas for a moment, and then turned abruptly away. When he looked
at Katherine again, his face was set and a little flushed. He seemed to
be making a calculation--a thing he had always some difficulty in doing.
"You've been at it practically all your life; but it took
you--one--two--three--five years' real hard work, didn't it, before you
could paint like that?"

"Yes, Ted, five years' hard labour, with costs."

"It'll take me four. Thank heaven, I've learnt anatomy!"

Katherine said nothing: she had opened the portfolio and spread out the
drawings, and was hanging over them in amazement. How, when, and where
the boy had done the things, she could not imagine. There were finished
studies in anatomy, of heads and limbs in every conceivable attitude.
There were shilling drawing-books crammed with illustrations of most
possible subjects and some impossible ones; loose sketches done on the
backs of envelopes, the fly-leaves of books, and (fearful revelation of
artistic depravity!) the ruled pages of ledgers. And in every one of
them there was power and wild exuberant vitality. It was genius, rampant
and undisciplined, but unmistakabl