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house and went to stay with Katharine Butler. "Let us hope there is no voice in Castine unkind enough to crossed out: be raised rise in this emergency," someone said.

  Soon the walls of the new studio were covered

with canvases showing houses and barns, wharves and willows, painted with precision and with a clear, lacquer-like finish. Miss Butler's house came to be regarded as a nucleus of interesting people. "And then it was Labor Day and the summer people began to leave, and nobody thought much more about the Japanese painter quartered in Katharine Butler's house, or whether that crossed out: curious unusual couple was intending to spend the winter in Castine.

  Early in the following summer, Katharine

drove up to our door in a car which had been modified so that it could be driven by a very small person. I thought she looked tired, even haggard, and she came up the steps very slowly. "I came to ask you for a favor. I want to go and open my house - it's been closed most of the winter