drawings, ranged along the
top of the couch, to the portrait of Ewing's mother, hung between the
two windows, and the speech died on his lips. He stepped back, bit into
a reserve slice of bread and waved an inquiring chicken bone toward the
picture.

"My mother," explained Ewing. "My father painted it."

Sydenham's jaw fell, and looking again at the portrait he muttered some
low, swift phrase of bewilderment. Ewing waited for him to speak, but
the old man only stared.

"It has good color, don't you think?" he ventured at last, but even the
mention of color could not move Sydenham to speech. He absently consumed
the remainder of his food and flicked crumbs from his frayed jacket.

"You look like her," he said at last, with so much the air of speaking
to himself that Ewing made no answer. He moved toward the door with
bowed head. At the threshold he looked back at Ewing a brief moment,
then went out, closing the door softly behind him.

Ewing decided that his neighbor was a curious old man. Recalling other
curious people he had met in this strange new world, he was reminded of
the lady who had urged him to call on her. He was still ready to believe
that anyone might wish to talk to him, or to hear him talk. But in spite
of this, the old lady had been queer. From the table he picked up the
card she had given him, studying the name and wondering what they might
talk about.

He was still feeling this mild wonder when he rang the lady's bell at
five o'clock.

CHAPTER XV

FLESH OF HER FLESH

Two persons had waited for Ewing. Mrs. Lowndes was one of them, sitting
forward in her chair and braced on its arms, though her head dropped now
and then in forgetfulness. The other was a big, shambling old man, a
dark man gone gray, his face needing the kindly, yellowish-brown eyes to
save it from sternness. His thickets of eyebrows were joined in a
half-humorous scowl of perplexity.

"I had to send for you, Fred. You and Herbert Sydenham are the only two
left who were close to me then, and Herbert Sydenham--well--" she
laughed a laugh of exquisitely humorous pain--"Herbert would have
forgotten me any time these twenty years for a striking color scheme, a
streak of unpaintable moonshine. It was you, Fred, or no one, and it
hurt me so! All last night I was on the rocks being ground to bits. I
knew you would say the wise thing."

The big man had risen to walk the floor, his thick shoulders heaving as
if to throw off