spect no one. It is very strange."

"You were going to tell me something when you came in. You said you
could not sit to me again. Why is that?"

"Because they have found out everything at home, that I sat for you,
for the Virgin."

"But they don't know that--"

"Yes, they do. They know everything. Father McCabe came in last night,
just after we had closed the shop. It was I who let him in, and mother
was sorry. She knew he had come to ask father for a subscription to his
church. But I had said that father and mother were at home, and when I
brought him upstairs and we got into the light, he stood looking at me.
He had not seen me for some years, and I thought at first it was
because he saw me grown up. He sat down, and began to talk to father
and mother about his church, and the altars he had ordered for it, and
the statues, and then he said that you were doing a statue for him, and
mother said that she knew you very well, and that you sometimes came to
spend an evening with us, and that I sat to you. It was then that I saw
him give a start. Unfortunately, I was sitting under a lamp reading a
book, and the light was full upon my face, and he had a good view of
it. I could see that he recognised me at once. You must have shown him
the statue. It was yesterday you changed the head."

"You had not gone an hour when he called, and I had not covered up the
group. Now I am beginning to see light. He came here anxious to discuss
every sort of thing with me, the Irish Romanesque, the Celtic
renaissance, stained glass, the possibility of rebuilding another
Cormac's Chapel. He sat warming his shins before the stove, and I
thought he would have gone on for ever arguing about the possibility of
returning to origins of art. I had to stop him, he was wasting all my
day, and I brought over that table to show him my design for the altar.
He said it was not large enough, and he took hours to explain how much
room the priest would require for his book and his chalice. I thought I
should never have got rid of him. He wanted to know about the statue of
the Virgin, and he was not satisfied when I told him it was not
finished. He prowled about the studio, looking into everything. I had
sent him a sketch for the Virgin and Child, and he recognised the pose
as the same, and he began to argue. I told him that sculptors always
used models, and that even a draped figure had to be done from the nude
first, and that the drapery went on afterw