Jean's cheeks were poppies.
"Yes," she faltered.
"Whose is it?"
"Mine."
The reluctant monosyllables whipped Mrs. Fanshaw's curiosity wide awake.
"No more nonsense," she charged. "Tell me at once who gave you this."
"Nobody," confessed Jean faintly. "I—I made it."
"You!" A pair of glasses, black-rimmed and formidable, bore instantly upon the marvel and searched it stitch by stitch.
Jean waited breathless. Wrought with infinite labor not of the hands alone, the little piece of needlework was absurdly freighted with meaning. In the old days she had loathed such employment as ardently as her sister loved it, but of late she had set herself doggedly to learn the art, since it seemed to her that this more than anything else would typify her new outlook, her return to sex. As such a symbol she had brought her handiwork into the visitors' room. As such, before their meeting, she had hoped her mother might interpret it. Even now, bereft of illusions as she was, she still hoped something, she knew not what.
In fairness to Mrs. Fanshaw it should be recorded that she apparently grasped some hint of this. Relatively speaking, her smile was encouraging. Viewed from her own standpoint, she all but scaled the top note of praise when, extending the embroidery at last, she said,—