Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/100

92 washes on his canvas. Anne worked with imperceptible strokes, humming sometimes,

Under the stimulus of this new life, where hope and fear and desire chased one another in quickly shifting moods, Helen Wistar woke to a consciousness of the time already lost at twenty. Her masters were teaching her mere technique. In that which was to her the very soul of art she was making no progress. She was tired of plaster heads and of ragged models. What good could ever come of painting just what one saw? One's thought of what the world should be ought to be expressed in one's work.

She too would paint a picture, embodying her new belief. In a misguided moment she confided her idea to Anne. A belligerent intimacy had sprung up between the two girls.

Anne, after a losing struggle with her conscience, betrayed the same to Mrs. Kent.