e had no longer any mother who would care enough to try to
understand, but _she_ would care enough.

"He bowed down and worshiped," said Paul, in a shocked, frightened
voice. "He knocked his head on the stones and cried like anything. He
said he hated God."

"Oh!" cried Marise, intolerably stung by sympathy and pity. She started
up to her feet, her heart burning, the tears on her cheeks. Her arms
ached with emptiness till she should have drawn that suffering into
them.

Paul said shyly, "Say, Mother, it's _awful_ hard on those Powers kids,
isn't it, not having anybody but their grandmother. Say, Mother, don't
you think maybe we could . . . we could . . ." He turned his freckled,
tanned, serious little face up to hers.

His mother stooped to kiss him, furiously, burningly, passionately, as
she did not often kiss Paul, and he clung to her with all the strength
of his strong little arms. "Yes, yes, you darling, you darling," she
told him brokenly. "Yes, yes, yes."

II

September 10.

Marise was slowly going through a passage of Scriabine, which had just
come in the mail. She was absorbed in the difficulties and novelties of
it, her ear alert to catch a clue to the meaning of those new rhythms
and progressions, her mind opened wide to understand them when she heard
them.

It was with an effort that she brought her attention back to Elly, who
had come in behind her and was saying something urgently. Marise turned
around on the piano-stool, her head humming with the unfamiliar,
tantalizing beauties and intricacies of the page she had left half
unread, and considered the little girl for an instant before she heard
what she said. How Elly did grow! That dress was already much too small
for her.

Well, Elly was not the only one who had grown out of her old clothes
this summer . . . the old garments that had been large enough and now must
be laid aside! . . . Elly was saying, "Mother, one of my chickens looks
sick, and I don't know what to do. I _wish_ you'd come!"

Marise began a process of mentally weighing which was more important,
Scriabine or Elly's chicken. Elly looked at her mother with imploring
eyes. "Mother, he looked awfully sick. And he is my nicest little
Downy-head, the one I've always loved the best. I've tried to take such
good care of him. Mother, I'm _worried_ about him."

Marise decided that Scriabine had at least the capacity to wait, while
the chicken might not. She got up, saying, "All right