Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/167

A Puritan Bohemia for her dead. She had cared for that child as if it had been her own, and the touch of its mother's hands had been as the touch of dear dead hands upon hers.

Then her own sorrow came sharply back to her.

"Oh," she cried under her breath, "if I could only forget, forget"

Would forgetting her own hurt mean forgetting the world's pain? She walked swiftly on in half-ecstatic weariness. Just now it seemed that the glory and the grief of life are one.

As she entered the Square she was conscious of colour and of fragrance. The young leaves on the elms and the willows shimmered in the sun. Flower-boys stood at the corners with their baskets. The odour of new grass was in the air.

At the entrance to the studio building stood Anne with Howard Stanton. He stooped and picked a bunch of violets from a basket for her. The sound of their laughter and the chirping of the birds drifted to Mrs. Kent's ears.