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 eyes politely. "Who am I to instruct you? My child, you are an artist. You frighten me!" She leaned forward a little, confidingly, and whispered. "It happens like that . . . in the most unexpected places, in villages, in ugly towns . . . why, even in a dirty mill town like this."

Between the two there was a bond, a thing which neither ever mentioned but which, in the silence that followed Miss Ogilvie's undignified outburst, took possession of both and drew them together. Both scorned the Town, a treason which none had discovered; and now when Miss Ogilvie spoke again she dragged the secret bond into the glaring light of day.

"Artists occur," she said, "without respect for places." And then after a little pause. . . "But you must never let any one here suspect you're an artist. It would make you unhappy." Recovering herself a little she began again to rock gently. "For a long time I've known you were escaping me. . . . It was no use hiding it from myself. . . . I know it now. . . ."

She smiled triumphantly a withered, rosy smile, a bit like the smile one might see on the bright face of a lady apple, and began pulling at the lace on her handkerchief. "It's wonderful," she said, "to think I have discovered it. . . . Poor me! But you must work, Ellen, there are hard days ahead . . . harder than you guess.

"D'you know?" she continued, in her excitement leaning forward once more, "when I was a girl, I played well . . . I was like you . . . not so independent, not so strong, because I was always a little woman . . . even then," she added as if she were conscious that age had shriveled her. "Sometimes I thought I would like to be a great pianist . . . a great artist. . . . But women didn't do such things in my day. My father would never have listened to it for a moment. It wasn't a ladylike thing to do. It was like being a circus rider. He let me take lessons so that I could play in the drawing-room and accompany my young men when they sang. My father even let me study in Munich, but when he found out I was