t, experimenting, to bring out all that might still
be seen of the withdrawn image on its faintly glinting field of gold.
His face was keen with interest; the love of beautiful things in this
moment of satisfaction smoothed away from it every line of dejection and
irritability.

Brenda was examining the picture with an attention equal to his, but, if
one might so describe it, of a different color. Her admiration got its
life largely from Gerald's, whose tastes in art she was in the habit of
adopting blindfold. Of this, however, she was not aware, and gazed doing
good to her soul by the conscious and deliberate contemplation of a
masterpiece.

"Do you remember a great calm, white figure in the communal palace at
Siena?" Gerald asked, "with other figures of Virtues on the same wall?
Doesn't this remind you of them?"

Brenda answered abstractedly:

"Yes," and continued to look. "How amazing they are!" she fervently
exclaimed. He supposed she meant the saint's hands or eyes, but she
explained, "The Italians."

He did not take up the idea either to agree or to dispute; his mind was
busy with one Italian only, the painter of the picture before him.

The young girl's interest flagged sooner than his own; he felt her melt
from his side while he continued seeking proof in this detail and that
of the painter's identity.

When he turned to find her and to follow, she was kneeling on one of the
wooden forms, her gloved hands joined, her face toward the high altar.

He approved the courtesy of it, done, as he knew, in order that the
priest, who stood aside, waiting for them to finish, should not think
these barbarians who came into his church to see a work of art had no
respect for his shrines and holies. Having returned the light to the
priest Gerald himself, while waiting for Brenda, took a melancholy
religious attitude, his hat and cane held against his breast, and sent
his thoughts gropingly upward, where the solitary thing they encountered
was his poor mother in heaven. Heaven and the changes undergone by those
who enter there he could never make very real to himself. He thought of
her as she used to be, affectionate and ill.

At the stir of Brenda rising from her knees he, too, stirred, ready to
depart. She was bowing to the altar, making an obeisance so deep, so
beautifully reverent, that the priest could never have guessed she was
not a Catholic. After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the
sanctuary, lik