Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/66

58 "But you are working with paint," remonstrated Anne. "Whatever you do must be done with that. How can you paint philosophy?"

The work went on while autumn drifted into late November. Now and then dead leaves were blown into the studio through the open skylight. Sometimes rain fell on the roof. Mrs. Kent, embroidering by the fire, listened, in awe tempered with amusement, to fierce debates concerning art and life. Her three young friends played too deftly with notions concerning human existence, she sometimes thought. They were "wise because until now nothing had happened to them."

Helen Wistar drank in eagerly all her master's teaching. As he worked he talked much about merging one's life in the life of the whole. It was well for the girl that her eyes were closed, otherwise Howard might have grown to understand the look in them. Only Anne understood that look.

To these remarks Anne listened with an angry sense of her own limitations.