about it. I believe she prayed for them. She was quite
sure, dear lady, that "They" wouldn't do it if "They" knew how
sensitive he was, how much it hurt him. And of course it didn't
really hurt him. He was above it all.

I remember I began that Sunday by cracking up Burton to her, just to
see how she would take it, and perhaps for another reason. Antigone
had carried him off to the strawberry-bed, where I gathered from
their sounds of happy laughter that they were feeding each other
with the biggest ones. For the moment, though not, I think,
afterward, Antigone's mother was blind and deaf to what was going on
in the strawberry-bed. I spoke to her of Burton and his work, of the
essay on Ford Lankester, of the brilliant novel he had just
published, his first; and I even went so far as to speak of the
praise it had received; but I couldn't interest her in Burton. I
believe she always, up to the very last, owed Burton a grudge on
account of his novels; not so much because he had so presumptuously
written them as because he had been praised for writing them. I
don't blame her, neither did he, for this feeling. It was
inseparable from the piety with which she regarded Charles Wrackham
as a great figure in literature, a sacred and solitary figure.

I don't know how I got her off him and on to Antigone. I may have
asked her point-blank to what extent Antigone was her father's
daughter. The luminous and expansive lady under the sunshade was a
little less luminous and expansive when we came to Angelette, as she
called her; but I gathered then, and later, that Antigone was a
dedicated child, a child set apart and consecrated to the service
of her father. It was not, of course, to be expected that she should
inherit any of his genius; Mrs. Wrackham seemed to think it
sufficiently wonderful that she should have developed the
intelligence that fitted her to be his secretary. I was not to
suppose it was because he couldn't afford a secretary (the lady
laughed as she said this; for you see how absurd it was, the idea of
Charles Wrackham not being able to afford anything). It was because
they both felt that Antigone ought not to be, as she put it,
"overshadowed" by him; he wished that she should be associated,
intimately associated, with his work; that the child should have her
little part in his glory. It was not only her share of life which he
took and so to speak put in the bank for her, but an investment for
Antigone in the big b