Ybarra started to speak, but Purcell held up his hand. He looked from Judith Todd to the bits of clay on the table. The tallest were perhaps fourteen inches, figures of famous men and women, of little shopgirls, of an ancient hag of a woman, of a blind man. Fantastic, gay, sinister, and pathetic, each one had its authentic breath of life. They had been done with the lightness of touch, the half-bitter whimsicality of a genius that is afraid of itself. And into them there had been poured the hunger and the rebellion of long repression.
George Jean Purcell shot a keen glance from under his gray brows at the woman who stood clutching the back of a chair, trying to keep defiance in her eyes. He noted the old serge suit, carelessly worn, the unfashionable hat; and over and beyond these details he observed the lines of endurance about her mouth, which could not obliterate its humour. He also saw the rather bitter keenness of her dark bright eyes.
“Spinster,” he thought; “iron-bound sense of duty; starving for proper soil to grow in. What miracle was it that let her do these amazing things?” And aloud he said, “How did you happen to wait until now?”
She looked as if she thought the question a little stupid.
“I never had time, or a place to work in where I could do as I liked.”
“You have ties, obligations?”
She smiled without bitterness.
“I have to make a living; and I have a mother with a weak heart, who can’t realize I’ve grown up.”
“You know you have genius?”
Her face became gay with a touch of impish humour.