The unknown causes her no anxiety. In this she is her mother's child. She never formed an interest in pursuing hidden, so-called objective truths, perceiving correctly that the thirst for understanding stems from a desire to master the surface phenomenon, even if in one's own mind only. Nor does she take refuge in accepted wisdom. She co-exists with intolerable incertainty as one might with a peaceable neighbour, speaking little and keeping to herself. Her soul is attuned entirely to an internal voice. She is her own compass, and her own pole.
Of the man who financed her later care and education she knows little. In fact there is nothing to indicate it was whom she believes it to be, other than the paintings and the tenor of the trust fund's directives - and her belief itself, if that were a form of evidence. She met him perhaps half a dozen times, mostly when she was still a very young child, and once after her mother's death. Of the first encounter she retains a memory (perhaps false in its vividness). It was afternoon, and she was asleep. Some sound from the next room woke her. For a moment all she saw was bright diffuse white: gauze veiled her line of view, fluttering gently in the breeze from an invisible window. She parted the netting with her hands and let herself slip off the edge of the bed, padding to the door and nudging it open with hands barely high enough to reach the knob. She felt no fear.
The air carried a drowsy scent of summer roses. It mingled with others, resinous or as ethereal, familiar though then nameless: oil of spike, oil of clove, stand oil, Venice turpentine, white spirit, the riverbank odour of freshly ground pigment.
"Did your mother paint this, little girl?"
"No," she answered.
Insofar as she knew it was the truth.
"I understand," he said. And then, after a short pause, "This is what they felt, then, at that table in Emmaus."