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288 behind her, and its gentle interests must henceforth be subdued in the gentler, quieter duties of a mother. Such a casual kindness as she was now showing him, in singling him out from a crowd and explaining to him the good points of her husband's pictures, was as much as he might in future expect to receive; he could not have formulated a statement of what, more than this, he had ever received or expected; yet the fact that she was a mother made her seem to him definitely far more distant and unapproachable than she had ever been as merely a wife.

The conclusion was not one at which he arrived by any instantaneous process; but after he had moved away and stood alone watching her, it slowly became clear in his mind. He was roused from his moody, solitary musing by a low voice at his ear—"Why, oh, why do you let him do it?"

Floyd turned and saw Marion Clark looking at him with an expression of whimsical distress.

"Do what?" he asked.

"I hear that they are nearly all painted out at your mills, and so you must be partly responsible," she said. "It's a shame."

"Is it? Really as bad as that?"

She nodded. "In my opinion. And I'm morally sure I'm right. They say he's thinking of giving up his profession—in which I suppose he's pretty good. You must n't let him; he must be mad."

"I guess I won't undertake to instruct Stewart as to his proper calling," Floyd said dryly.

"Why, you're his best friend, are n't you? And it's no more than friendly to keep him from making a fool of himself."

Floyd contested the point. "Oh, if it were that. But I don't believe the pictures are so bad as you make out. Lydia called my attention to one especially and had a good deal to say for it that I thought all right."