forest."
Thus Zella, aware that Miss St. Craye's eyes had first opened to the glare of London lights. But if she had hoped by this subtle allusion to force the hand of Alison, she speedily discovered her fallacy. A second postcard, even briefer than the first one had been, revealed to Zella with some bitterness that her literary offspring was ill-timed—had, in fact, launched itself upon Miss St. Craye's attention in one of her rare moods of rather ponderous humorousness.
She read in Alison's large square handwriting, that studiously sloped downhill in accordance with the general belief that this is characteristic of those who have known much trouble and suffering, the disconcerting message:
"ZELLA,—No, you are right; I do not understand your 'fragment.' Neither do you; for there is nothing to understand. Find yourself, little one, is my advice, and until you have done so do not write. Your well-wisher— do you know that quaint old term, I wonder?—A. ST. C."
Zella, feeling bitterly disgusted at her well-wisher's lack of insight, put Richard Jefferies into the bookcase again, and, after a month of desultory novel-reading of the lightest kind, discovered that she was a realist of the most passionate description.
She underlined several passages in "Anna Karenina," bought a cheap edition of Galsworthy's plays, and began to write another book. This time she really did achieve half a dozen chapters before the desire for an audience obsessed her too strongly to be resisted.
But Alison St. Craye should be given no further opportunity for unworthy facetiousness.
Zella read over her own production critically, thought that it was good, and wondered if Tante Stéphanie would understand it. It did not occur to her to test her father.
"Tante Stéphanie, I should rather like to read you something, when you have time, and if it wouldn't bore you."
"Something you have written?" hazarded Stéphanie, looking pleased.
"Yes. Just the beginning, you know. And I want you to tell me exactly what you think," said Zella eagerly and quite untruly.
"Very well, my dear. I shall like to hear it, and it is very nice of you to let me. I know that maman always said you would write one of these days."
"It's nothing very much, of course, and you must criticize hard. When would you like it? Any time will do, of course—there's naturally no hurry."
"I am in a hurry," smiled the tactful Stéphanie; "there is no time like the present. Won't you fetch it now?"
"Oh, are you sure?" said Zella, getting up and moving towards her writing-table. "Yes, indeed, if you will."
"Let me see . . ." said Zella, one hand on the drawer of the writing -table, " where is the thing?"
Almost before she had finished speaking, the opened drawer revealed the manuscript, and she carried it to a corner of the sofa.
Mdlle. de Kervoyou possessed to the full the quality, as rare as it is undefinable, of believing absolutely in the sincerity of those with whom she came into contact.
Consequently Zella, abnormally sensitive to atmosphere, read aloud with perfect self-confidence the dreary philosophy in the midst of which moved her central figure, an aged Polish violinist, an exile in London.
"Oh, Zella! it is very sad."
"Is it? I do not think I meant it to be, exactly— only true to life."
This was exactly what Mdlle. de Kervoyou did not think it, but she only said gently:
"You are very young to have such a sad idea of life."
Zella looked broodingly into the fire and felt delighted. This was exactly what she wanted Tante Stéphanie to think. But her satisfaction was dashed a moment later.
"But, after all, it really is the young who see things so darkly. You will learn to look for the silver lining, Zella."
Zella hoped that she successfully masked her annoyance by deepening the intensity of her gaze as she replied quietly:
"Perhaps. It is not of a silver lining to my own clouds that I was thinking, but to those of the poor, the oppressed, the starving."
Mdlle. de Kervoyou laid down her work. She had given up her beautiful Church embroidery, and sewed instead for the mothers and babies in the village.
"Mon enfant cherié," she said very earnestly, "indeed I understand you, and it is very good that you should think of the poor. But you will be able to give much help later on. And you will certainly write books, to give people pleasure and help them. in that way."
"Do you think I shall?" said Zella in quite a different tone, one of shy, eager pleasure and interest.
"But yes," exclaimed Tante Stéphanie, delighted. "It is very clever to have thought of all that at your age, about that poor old Count Stanilas. I liked very much the part about his music, when the tunes seem to take him back to his own country again and his old home. It is most touching and beautiful."
"Oh, Tante Stéphanie, I'm so glad! But tell me what you think of it as a whole; remember you promised to tell me truly," urged Zella unwisely.
Tante Stéphanie hesitated.
"I think, perhaps, it is a little discouraging," she said at last, " when you say so much about the sordidness of life, and that there is no real happiness anywhere. And I don't think, somehow, he would have said to the little girl, when he was teaching her the violin, 'There is no God but Chance, and no Chance but God.'"
"Why,not?" said Zella, who had regarded the mot in question as a profound epigram.
Perhaps I do not quite see what it means," said her aunt diffidently, " but I am sure it was not quite the thing to say to a child. Besides, if she had repeated it to her parents, as she most likely would, they would not have liked it at all, and the poor Count might have lost his pupil."
Zella had no reply.
Mdlle. de Kervoyou looked at her rather wistfully. "But I love the part about his music," she repeated, "it is charming."
Zella revived.
"Of course anything about music appeals to me very deeply," she murmured.
"Of course," assented Mdlle. de Kervoyou, who happened to be absolutely unmusical.
But her ready acceptance of Zella's statement was perhaps indirectly responsible for Zella's next convictions as to her means of self-expression.
The Polish count was laid aside, after a final outburst of realism in which every item of his meagre supper had been described with a minuteness that extended from the glistening oil of silvery and crumbling sardines to the white irregularity of a lump of salt. At which stage Zella perceived that the book was on such a scale as to need a lifetime's work before she could hope to complete it, and thereupon characteristically decided to wait until she could give more time to it.
She played the piano.
All through the spring, Villetswood was haunted by fragments of Debussy, renderings of Tchaikowsky and minor passages from the works of Sibelius. Zella retained all her old facility for reading at sight, and there was little
