minutes the American lady had completed her inspection,
and inclining her head in a little nod of reverential farewell to the
poet and his shoes, she was escorted downstairs by Rodney. Katharine
stayed by herself in the little room. The ceremony of ancestor-worship
had been more than usually oppressive to her. Moreover, the room was
becoming crowded beyond the bounds of order. Only that morning a heavily
insured proof-sheet had reached them from a collector in Australia,
which recorded a change of the poet's mind about a very famous phrase,
and, therefore, had claims to the honor of glazing and framing. But
was there room for it? Must it be hung on the staircase, or should some
other relic give place to do it honor? Feeling unable to decide the
question, Katharine glanced at the portrait of her grandfather, as if to
ask his opinion. The artist who had painted it was now out of fashion,
and by dint of showing it to visitors, Katharine had almost ceased
to see anything but a glow of faintly pleasing pink and brown tints,
enclosed within a circular scroll of gilt laurel-leaves. The young man
who was her grandfather looked vaguely over her head. The sensual lips
were slightly parted, and gave the face an expression of beholding
something lovely or miraculous vanishing or just rising upon the rim of
the distance. The expression repeated itself curiously upon Katharine's
face as she gazed up into his. They were the same age, or very nearly
so. She wondered what he was looking for; were there waves beating
upon a shore for him, too, she wondered, and heroes riding through the
leaf-hung forests? For perhaps the first time in her life she thought of
him as a man, young, unhappy, tempestuous, full of desires and faults;
for the first time she realized him for herself, and not from her
mother's memory. He might have been her brother, she thought. It seemed
to her that they were akin, with the mysterious kinship of blood which
makes it seem possible to interpret the sights which the eyes of the
dead behold so intently, or even to believe that they look with us upon
our present joys and sorrows. He would have understood, she thought,
suddenly; and instead of laying her withered flowers upon his shrine,
she brought him her own perplexities--perhaps a gift of greater value,
should the dead be conscious of gifts, than flowers and incense and
adoration. Doubts, questionings, and despondencies she felt, as she
looked up, would be more wel