A bolt of horror shot through her.  She pressed her face quickly against the window-panes as closely as possible, searching for the whereabouts of the lads.  As she looked, the playing struggling mass of them went down in the road, the others piled on one.  She thought she knew which one,—­he was the strongest,—­then they were lost from her sight, as they rolled in nearer to the sidewalk.  And straight toward them rushed that destroyer in the streets.  She tried to throw up the sashes.  She tried to lean out and cry down to him, to wave her hands to him with warning as she had often done with joy.  She could not raise the sashes.  She had not the strength left to turn the rusty bolts.  Nor was there time.  She looked again; she saw what was going to happen.  Then with frenzy she began to beat against the window-sashes and to moan and try to stifle her own moans.  And then shrill startled screams and piteous cries came up to her, and crazed now and no longer knowing what she did, she struck the window-panes in her agony until they were shattered and she thrust her arms out through them with a last blind instinct to wave to him, to reach him, to drag him out of the way.  For some moments her arms hung there outside the shattered window-glass, and a shower of crimson drops from her fingers splashed on the paving-stones below.  She kept on waving her lacerated hands more and more feebly, slowly; and then they were drawn inward after her body which dropped unconscious to the garret floor.

IV

It was a gay scene over at the art school next morning.  Even before the accustomed hour the big barnlike room, with a few prize pictures of former classes scattered about the walls, and with the old academy easels standing about like a caravan of patient camels ever loaded with new burdens but ever traveling the same ancient sands of art—­even before nine o’clock the barnlike room presented a scene of eager healthy animal spirits.  On the easel of every youthful worker, nearly finished, lay the portrait of the mother.  In every case it had been differently done, inadequately done; but in all cases it had been done.  Hardly could any observer have failed to recognize what was there depicted.  Beyond smearings and daubings of paint, as past the edges of concealing clouds, one caught glimpses of a serene and steadfast human radiance.  There one beheld the familiar image of that orb which in dark and pathless hours has through all ages been the guardian light of the world—­the mother.

The best in them had gone into the painting of this portrait, and the consciousness of our best gives us the sense of our power, and the consciousness of our power yields us our enthusiasm; hence the exhilaration and energy of the studio scene.