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THE LOST TITIAN
255

with its aura of repressed ardencies. But this, he knew, was not the time to say so.

"How do you feel about them?" he countered, watching her as she turned toward him and absently rubbed her fingers together. It struck him at first as a movement of repudiation, but he remembered that it was merely an effort to remove the attic dust from her hands.

"It's hard to explain," was her answer. "Some of them I dislike and some of them I can't understand, and there are a few of them I almost hate."

"Why?" he asked.

"I don't think I could make it clear to you," was all she said.

He saw no light through the blind wall of his dilemma, and he could not quite see how the first move was to be made. So he asked, in a merciful effort at postponement: "What pictures were taken from this collection?"

"My father took the ones he liked when he went away the last time. He took them all but one." She had misunderstood him.

"No; you spoke of your Aunt Georgina