“It beats me where you learned how to do these things,” his father protested.

“But it doesn’t want learning; it’s all so simple—­not like painting, you know.”

Mr. Frank had been corresponding with the boy’s headmaster.  “Yes, he is a good fellow,” said one of the letters; “just a gentle clear-minded boy, with courage at call when he wants it, and one really remarkable talent.  You may not have discovered it, but he is a mathematician; and as different from the ordinary book-made mathematician—­from the dozens of boys I send up regularly to Cambridge—­as cheese is from chalk.  He has a sort of passion for pure reasoning—­for its processes.  Of course he does not know it; but from the first it has been a pleasure to me (an old pupil of Routh’s) to watch his work.  ‘Style’ is not a word one associates as a rule with mathematics, but I can use no other to express the quality which your boy brings to that study. . . .”

“Good Lord!” groaned Mr. Frank, who had never been able to add up his washing bills.

He read the letter to Miss Bracy, and the pair began to watch Victor with a new wonder.  They were confident that no Bracy had ever been a mathematician; for an uncle of theirs, now a rector in Shropshire and once of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where for reasons best known to himself he had sought honours in the Mathematical Tripos and narrowly missed the Wooden Spoon, had clearly no claim to the title.  Whence in the world did the boy derive this gift?  “His mother—­” Miss Bracy began, and broke off as a puff of smoke shot out from the fireplace.  It was late September; Deborah had lit the fire that morning for the first time since May, and the chimney never drew well at starting.  Miss Bracy took the tongs in hand, but she was not thinking of the smoke; neither was Mr. Frank, while he watched her.  They were both thinking of the dead woman.  The thought of her—­the ghost of her—­was always rising now between them and her boy; she was the impalpable screen they tried daily and in vain to pierce; to her they had come to refer unconsciously all that was inexplicable in him.  And so much was inexplicable!  They loved him now; they stretched out their hands to him:  behind her he smiled at them, but through or across her their hands could never reach.

As at first they had avoided all allusion to her, and been thankful that the boy’s reticence made it easy, so now they grew almost feverishly anxious to discover how he felt towards his mother’s memory.  They detected each other laying small traps for him, and were ashamed.  They held their breath as with an air of cheerful unconsciousness he walked past the traps, escaping them one and all.  At first in her irritation Miss Bracy accused him of what she (of all women!) called false pride.  “He is ashamed of her.  He wishes to forget, and is only too glad that we began by encouraging him.”  On second thoughts she knew the charge to be undeserved and odious.  His obvious simplicity gave it the lie.  Moreover she knew that a small water-colour sketch of her in her youth—­a drawing of Mr. Frank’s—­stood on the table in the boy’s bedroom.  Miss Bracy often dusted that room with her own hands.