This, forsooth, meant to her what God meant to others.

To this she strove to be true, and not to hurt nor vex.

And how little she really knew of her mother, and of how much was conjecture and surmise, she was unaware; for it was through many years she had erected this mother-myth.
Yet was it all myth?
She resented the doubt with quick jealousy, and, opening the bottom drawer of the chest, drew forth a battered portfolio.
Out rolled manuscripts, faded and worn, and arose a faint far scent of sweet-kept age.

The writing was delicate and curled, with the quaint fineness of half a century before.

She read a stanza to herself: "Sweet as a wind-lute's airy strains Your gentle muse has learned to sing, And California's boundless plains Prolong the soft notes echoing." She wondered, for the thousandth time, what a windlute was; yet much of beauty, much of beyondness, she sensed of this dimly remembered beautiful mother of hers.