his father's career, which
could not be safely intrusted to June, though she had offered to
undertake it. Both Jon and his mother had felt that if she took his
portfolios, unexhibited drawings and unfinished matter, away with her,
the work would encounter such icy blasts from Paul Post and other
frequenters of her studio, that it would soon be frozen out even of her
warm heart. On its old-fashioned plane and of its kind the work was
good, and they could not bear the thought of its subjection to
ridicule. A one-man exhibition of his work was the least testimony they
could pay to one they had loved; and on preparation for this they spent
many hours together. Jon came to have a curiously increased respect for
his father. The quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre
talent into something really individual was disclosed by these
researches. There was a great mass of work with a rare continuity of
growth in depth and reach of vision. Nothing certainly went very deep,
or reached very high--but such as the work was, it was thorough,
conscientious, and complete. And, remembering his father's utter
absence of "side" or self-assertion, the chaffing humility with which
he had always spoken of his own efforts, ever calling himself "an
amateur," Jon could not help feeling that he had never really known his
father. To take himself seriously, yet never bore others by letting
them know that he did so, seemed to have been his ruling principle.
There was something in this which appealed to the boy, and made him
heartily indorse his mother's comment: "He had true refinement; he
couldn't help thinking of others, whatever he did. And when he took a
resolution which went counter, he did it with the minimum of
defiance--not like the Age, is it? Twice in his life he had to go
against everything; and yet it never made him bitter." Jon saw tears
running down her face, which she at once turned away from him. She was
so quiet about her loss that sometimes he had thought she didn't feel
it much. Now, as he looked at her, he felt how far he fell short of the
reserve power and dignity in both his father and his mother. And,
stealing up to her, he put his arm round her waist. She kissed him
swiftly, but with a sort of passion, and went out of the room.

The studio, where they had been sorting and labelling, had once been
Holly's schoolroom, devoted to her silk-worms, dried lavender, music,
and other forms of instruction. Now, at the end of