"Just what do you do in the studios?"
"Anything—everything. Mend their clothes, clean palettes, sweep the studios, make curtains, look after them when they're sick, cook for them when they're busy."
"No wonder you know them so well."
It was his first reference to her work. She waited breathlessly, but he returned to her past again.
"Were you never tempted to take up your mother's profession?"
"No. You see, I had always been told how hard that life was, and I suppose I rather shared my father's belief that it wasn't respectable. Warburton found my mother its most interesting citizen, while it disapproved of her entirely. She was just a simple, frail woman, but to Warburton she was a brand plucked from the burning, and her past was never to be forgotten."
"Was your father in love with her, or was it the romance of her profession which attracted him?"
"Father was very religious. I think he married her to save her soul. He was as kind to her as he knew how to be, but he never understood her."
"And you?"
"I loved her and took care of her. She was my child from the time I was a baby. I acted as interpreter to my father, whom I understood, too, in a way. He was a dour, silent man, but just."