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past a ruined castle in a black storm, cowled monks burying treasure, and a horrendous one of a gray, bulky maggotlike thing rising out of mist in a meadow. That one made Sally shudder and pass on quickly. Imogen, on the other hand, seemed to paint more strictly from life: flower studies, fields of wheat, and a careful drawing of the kitchen sink, piled full of thick crockery. That seemed very like Imogen. She could hear Imogen at that moment: “But I must face facts , Cart. It doesn’t matter how unpleasant they are. I can’t turn my back on reality.”
    â€œWhy can’t you?” Cart demanded. “It seems to me that enough facts come up out of life and hit you without you going and facing all the other ones. Why can’t you turn your back on a few?”
    â€œDon’t you see? It’s a matter of Truth and Art!” Imogen declared. The strong note of hysteria was in her voice.
    Sally sighed and turned to the next picture in the row. And laughed. Oliver seemed to hear her. He rumbled hard from the bottom of the stairs. Sally was laughing too much to care. The picture was signed “And Fenella did just this one awful one.” The picture was a terrible wicked jumble of everyone else’s. N’s badly drawn Oliver snuffled at Cart’s cowled monk, who fled for protection past WH’s spaceship to Imogen’s sink piled with crockery, where—Sally found she remembered this one all right. It was a large, simpering mother figure, stretching out both arms toward the sink.
    She made tracings, the little beast! Sally said.
    The mother was the next painting. She was stretching out her arms, not to a sink but to a fat, simpering baby. Sally could remember painting this. And it was awful. It embarrassed her, it was so bad. The faces simpered, the colors were weak and bad, and the shapes were floppy and pointless. The mother was like an aimless maggot with a pretty face on top. Sally could even remember the row she and Cart had had over it. “Oh, leave it out, for goodness’ sake!” Cart had yelled. “It’s fat and squishy! It’s absolutely yuck!”
    And Sally had yelled back, “You’re the one who’s yuck! You don’t know a tender emotion when you see one. You’re afraid of feelings , that’s your trouble!” That was true in a way, about Cart. Cart’s body may have been large and blurred, but she tried to keep her mind like a small walled garden. She would let no wild things in—though she was ready enough to let them out if it suited her. Sally’s talk of tender emotions drove Cart wild at once.
    â€œDon’t give me that sentimental drivel!” she roared, and she had chased Sally round the bedroom, waving a coat hanger.
    Cart was saying much the same at the moment to the sobbing Imogen, though she said it in a kinder way. “Imogen, really, I do think you’re working all this up out of nothing.”
    â€œNo, I’m not! What good would a letter do? A letter, when my whole personality is at stake!” Imogen rang out dramatically.
    Oh! said Sally. She had quite forgotten she was looking for a letter. It was awful the way her mind seemed to point to only one thing at once. It was like the narrow beam of a torch.
    The obvious place to look was in the old bureau wedged in the corner. Its top had been cleared for the exhibition, and pictures propped on top of it. But it had four drawers below, one for each of them. Sally, of course, could not open the drawers, but that was not exactly a problem in her condition. She lowered herself at the bureau and pushed her face into the top drawer.
    This drawer was Cart’s. It was dark in there, but light came in through the keyhole—and through Sally—so that she could see. There was nothing to see. Cart had cleared the drawer out along with the top of the bureau. Sally remembered her doing it now. Cart had said, “I shall put away childish