keys in rusty locks. But Aunt Verona collected texts with the same meaningless precision, and there were now two drawers overflowing with the bescribbled scraps of paper.
As the winter advanced a new habit was formed. Aunt Verona took to writing at a furious rate on sheets of foolscap. At times her ideas lagged and she would sit staring at the paper in an abstraction which was proof against even the smell of burning bread. Paul found himself saddled with a new responsibility regarding the proper running of the small ménage. When Aunt Verona's ideas failed her, she would end by locking away the sheets of foolscap in the dresser. Perhaps five minutes later, as she was carrying a kettle from stove to sink, the recalcitrant ideas would come to her, whereupon she would abandon the task in hand, bring out the foolscap, and commence scribbling.
One evening after supper, when she had left her seat at the kitchen table to consult a dictionary in the playroom, Paul looked up from his arithmetic exercise and glanced at the sentences on her page. He succeeded in reading this:
"But Heinrich, though he could feel that one was an artist in every fibre, would never have understood how one might be so thoroughly and abysmally an artist as to be unable to succeed in art, once one's faith in one's higher ego were jeopardized. For him the fulfilment of an artistic aim would be gaged by public proclamation that the aim had been fulfilled, by public recognition of mere dexterity, or whatever. For the motto 'To thine own self be true' he would have substituted 'To the world's preconception of you, be true.' Art for him was a compromise between the individual and the community, just as his status was a compromise between the monarchical whip-hand and the grovelling of the masses, their willing or unwilling allegiance to his numbskull sire.
