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Sophie ran to join the others, and, as the three walked down the curved driveway of crushed stone, she was a little regretful. “Listen, Jamie and Ella, look, she is an awfully important girl and terribly talented and everything. Maybe it’s true her grandfather’s doing all this, whatever it was about her and these art buildings and all that, so maybe we oughtn’t to’ve——”

“Yes, we ought,” Ella said crossly. “I don’t care whether it’s true or not, who cares about any old art museum and I scarcely like her at all any more.”

“Don’t you?” Sophie looked pensive. “I think I do, sort of. Anyway I’m always going to stick up for her. She can do awfully nice things. You know that gold-and-green enamel pin she had on last dancing-class we all admired so? Well, I was here next day and happened to begin talking about it again and she ran in the house and got it and gave it to me, and I knew from her looks she’d like to’ve kept it, herself. All these servants they keep around here, you can see they like her, too.”

“Who pays ’em?” Jamie asked, and answered himself. “Her own grandfather—that’s who—so they got to. She can order ’em around all she likes; but not me, no soap! The more you go with her the more she acts like she’s fifty or sixty Queen of Shebas, and I don’t care what she invites me to she makes me so tired I’m never going to set another foot in her grandfather’s old grounds again!”

“What? You aren’t?” Ella cried. The two young girls exchanged sensational glances. “You mean never? You mean actually, Jamie?”

“That’s what I mean. You bet!”

“But, Jamie, you can’t say that,” Sophie said. “Why, that’s practically terrible! Why, you’re supposed to be practically her own special!”

“Not from now on.” He was dogged. “She’s too much for me and it’s got so I just can’t stand her. I just can’t stand her, I tell you! I’m through. I’m not going to be dragged around at any old girl’s chariot heels!”

The deserted Josephine had stood looking after them until they passed round the far corner of the house on their way to the street. For a time after they disappeared from her sight she remained near the gallery steps, lost in a hurt wonderment, unable to understand why Jamie and Ella had taken so offended and offensive a departure. Even the humbler Sophie hadn’t been very nice. Josephine didn’t care terribly much how Sophie or Ella behaved; but Jamie Elliston—that was different—and he’d been outrageous throughout this whole memorable afternoon.

She knew of course that art was beyond Jamie, and the noble conception of the museum above his understanding; but even so he needn’t have been too dumb to be proud of her, need he? Perhaps she hadn’t explained enough about her sacrifice of all that money. After the triumphant scene in the library this was a pretty mean anti-climax and she couldn’t fathom its cause. She took the problem to her grandfather, found him alone in the library with a half-empty glass of sherry on the table beside him. He was still a little flushed by recent pleasurable excitements and smiled upon her happily.

“I was waiting for you, Josephine. You and I have had a great afternoon, haven’t we?”

“Yes, I suppose so.” She sat upon a stool before him; but her lovely grey eyes were downcast.

“What’s the matter, dear? You ought to be on tiptoe after what you and I’ve been doing together to-day. What’s gone wrong?”

“Nothing.” She clasped her hands about her knees but still looked at the floor. “Grandfather, why are people so queer?”

“What people?”

“Well, I mean people my own age.”

“Oh, I see!” He was sympathetic. “You told your young guests about the museum, did you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And told them something of the costly difference it makes in your future, Josephine?”

“Well—I sort of——”

“I see,” he said again. “So now you’re wondering why our contemporaries usually aren’t delightedly enthusiastic about us when we do something rather splendid? Your young playmates didn’t respond to the news as you thought they would?”

“No. You’d almost have thought——Why, you’d really have thought I was telling ’em something they didn’t like.”

Thomas Oaklin laughed sadly. “Yes, poor child. You’ll have to learn that people, especially our contemporaries, are seldom generous enough to warm up to us when we’re shown to be their—well, let’s frankly say their superiors. The crowd’ll cheer the jockey who wins a race for them; but if they suspect anyone of being intellectually or artistically, or even morally, of a higher type than they are, they turn churl. I’m afraid that’s what your young friends did with you.”

“You think so?” At this, Josephine looked up and her eyes brightened suddenly. “I bet you’re right; I bet that was the matter with ’em! You always understand things, Grandfather.”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t understand why envy and jealousy were put into this world. I only know they’re here and that such people as you and I have to learn to seal our hearts so that they can’t injure us.”

“Seal our hearts? I like that idea, Grandfather. Yes; seal our hearts.”

“Defend our heads, too,” he added. “It’s true that the higher you lift your head the more they’ll throw bricks at it. You’ve just been finding out a little about that, haven’t you?”

“I certainly have!” Josephine was more and more pleased. “They showed the most despisable sides of their natures—yes, and their awful dumbness, too. Why, Grandfather, intellectually they’re just the mere young of the animal kingdom. They’ve learned how to read and write and begin conjugating; but there they stop flat. Compared to what I know about art, for instance——”

She let a widely waved hand finish the sentence for her; but her grandfather took up the theme. “Compared to what you know about art, Josephine, you needn’t expect even many grown people to show much competence. Think of all these books you’ve read—rare ones, by no means at everybody’s disposal—and of all our discussions of them and our long talks together. Think of your life among our collections and our pilgrimages to galleries abroad.” He sighed wistfully. “You’ll be one of the true brand of connoisseurs by the time you’re fully grown, dear—critic, expert and art historian all put together. I wish I could live to see it.”

“But you will, Grandfather. You surely——”

“No.” He lifted his right hand and let it fall resignedly upon the varicolored shawl over his knees. “My feeling for art, though, and my ideas will live on in you. You must remember that. I think I may last to see the building finished and my collections placed in it as I wish them; but—afterwards—well, you’re my hope of survival.”

“Am I, Grandfather?” He’d spoken with such gentle pathos that she was moved, almost tearful. “Am I truly that?”

“How else could it be, child?” he said. “My name will be over the portals of the museum; but the name only proves my pride that I loved art and my pride that I loved my city. The name’s only stone; you’ll be a living part of the museum—my granddaughter. You have a great heart and great talent—a great heart or you wouldn’t have wished me to go ahead with the plan; you’d have wanted the inheritance all for yourself.”

“No! No, I never wanted that.” Josephine’s emotion was still genuine. “I want to be a living part—oh, the very living spirit!—of the museum. It’s exactly what I want, Grandfather.”

“You’ll find it your reward. Don’t let anything interfere with it. Your experience of to-day may repeat itself, Josephine, because you’re made of finer fibre than other people. You mustn’t ever let the envies and jealousies of your inferiors affect you.”

“No,” she said softly. “I must remember that. Grandfather, it’s like the quotation I found the day Mother called me a miserable snippet on account of what I said to her about her not appreciating our full-length Goya. Whenever I’m hurt I’ll always seal my heart and—and I’ll always ‘sing high and aloof, safe from the wolves’ black jaw and the dull asses’ hoof.’ ”

The grandfather was thus given a moment of æsthetic and ancestral rapture. “Unbelievable!” he said. “No wonder your commonplace young companions don’t understand you, Josephine—a girl of fourteen quoting dear Ben Jonson like that on the very subject of themselves! I began to hope for this when I lost your father. Now when my time comes I can depart in peace.”

Josephine spoke in a whisper. “You mean because of—because of——”

“Yes, because of you. My museum is safe.” He leaned forward and lightly touched the top of her head.

This was his blessing upon her—and upon their high and generous enterprise, too—and he let his fingers linger. During some moments the two held that pose, with the lozenges of sunshine falling upon them through the old glass of the Jacobean windows and gilding the aged white hand among the glowing fair curls of the granddaughter. The attitudes were of such traditional perfection that neither the aged man nor the young girl could have been wholly free of satisfaction with the tableau. Not alone the artist, even in his truest emotion, must be his own audience; those who live mainly in the light he sheds must share that histrionic lot.

“Oh, Grandfather!” Josephine still kept her voice to a whisper; tears were now full upon her lashes. “Art is sanctuary. Our museum will be that, and I—oh, I’ll be what you want me to!”

Thomas Oaklin gently withdrew his hand, leaned back smiling upon her in a profound content. “I know what you’ll be,” he said, and sublimely believed he did.