The boy’s gaze followed hers.  He had not been in this big room, with the high-reaching skylight, and the vari-coloured pictures and grey walls.  His dark eyes went everywhere—­and flashed smiles and brought a touch-stone to the place.  Eyes trained to the Acropolis were on the pictures; and the temples of the gods spoke in swift words or laughed out in quick surprise.

The mistress of the house followed him, with amused step.  If Phil could only hear it!  She must manage somehow—­Phil was too shrewd and practical not to see how true the boy was—­and how keen!  That great Thing—­over the fireplace—­Chicago on her throne, with the nations prostrate before her—­how the boy wondered and chuckled—­and questioned her—­and brought the colour to her face!...  Philip had stood before the picture by the hour—­entranced; the man who painted it had made a key to go with it, and Philip Harris knew the meaning of every line and figure—­and he gloried and wallowed in it.  “That is a picture with some sense in it!” was his proudest word, standing before it and waving his hand at the vision on her throne.  She was a lovely lady—­a little like his wife, Philip Harris thought.  Perhaps the artist had not been unaware of this.  Certainly Mrs. Philip Harris knew it, and loathed the Thing.  The boy’s words were like music to her soul, under the skylight with the rain dripping softly down.  She had thought of covering the Thing up—­a velvet curtain, perhaps.  But she had not quite dared yet....  Across the room another picture was covered by a curtain—­the velvet folds sweeping straight in front of it, and covering it from top to bottom.  Only the rim of the gilt frame that reached to the ceiling, glimmered about the blue folds of the curtain.  The boy’s eyes had rested on the curtained picture as they passed before it, but Mrs. Philip Harris had not turned her head.  She felt the boy’s eyes now—­they had wandered to it again, and he stood with half-parted lips, as if something behind the curtain called to him.  She touched him subtly and drew his attention—­and he followed her a minute... then his attention wandered and he gazed at the deep folds in the curtain with troubled eyes.  She hesitated a moment—­and her hand trembled.  It was as if the curtain were calling her, too, and she moved toward it, the boy beside her....  They did not speak—­they moved blindly and paused a breath... the rain falling on the skylight.  The boy flashed a smile to her.  “I have not see it,” he said.

She reached out her hand then and drew back the curtain.  “It is Betty—­my little girl—­” she said, “she has gone away—­” She was talking aimlessly—­to steady her hands.  But the boy did not hear her—­he had stumbled a little—­and his eyes were on the picture—­searching the roguish smile, the wide eyes, the straight, true little figure that seemed stepping toward them—­out from behind the curtain....  The mother’s eyes feasted on it a moment hungrily and she turned to the boy.