-for it _was_ a form of vanity; you showed me that plainly
enough--how you must have despised me! But I am not that girl
now--indeed I'm not. I'm not impulsive--I think things out. I've
thought this out. I know Alan loves me--I know _how_ he loves me--and I
believe I can help him--oh, not in the ways I had fancied before--but
just merely by loving him." She paused, but Mrs. Quentin made no sign.
"I see it all so differently now. I see what an influence love itself
may be--how my believing in him, loving him, accepting him just as he
is, might help him more than any theories, any arguments. I might have
seen this long ago in looking at _you_--as he often told me--in seeing
how you'd kept yourself apart from--from--Mr. Quentin's work and
his--been always the beautiful side of life to them--kept their faith
alive in spite of themselves--not by interfering, preaching, reforming,
but by--just loving them and being there--" She looked at Mrs. Quentin
with a simple nobleness. "It isn't as if I cared for the money, you
know; if I cared for that, I should be afraid--"

"You will care for it in time," Mrs. Quentin said suddenly.

Miss Fenno drew back, releasing her hand. "In time?"

"Yes; when there's nothing else left." She stared a moment at the
pictures. "My poor child," she broke out, "I've heard all you say so
often before!"

"You've heard it?"

"Yes--from myself. I felt as you do, I argued as you do, I acted as I
mean to prevent your doing, when I married Alan's father."

The long empty gallery seemed to reverberate with the girl's startled
exclamation--"Oh, Mrs. Quentin--"

"Hush; let me speak. Do you suppose I'd do this if you were the kind of
pink-and-white idiot he ought to have married? It's because I see
you're alive, as I was, tingling with beliefs, ambitions, energies, as
I was--that I can't see you walled up alive, as I was, without
stretching out a hand to save you!" She sat gazing rigidly forward, her
eyes on the pictures, speaking in the low precipitate tone of one who
tries to press the meaning of a lifetime into a few breathless
sentences.

"When I met Alan's father," she went on, "I knew nothing of his--his
work. We met abroad, where I had been living with my mother. That was
twenty-six years ago, when the _Radiator_ was less--less notorious than
it is now. I knew my husband owned a newspaper--a great newspaper--and
nothing more. I had never seen a copy of the _Radiator_; I had no
notion what it sto