Stories by American Authors Volume III Part 3

"I am afraid my saying that sounded stilted," he returned. "I explained myself poorly. It is not easy for me to explain myself well."

"I understood," she said; "and I have warned you."

They did not speak to each other again during the whole sitting except once, when he asked her if she was warm enough.

"I have a fire to-day," he said.

"Have you not always a fire?" she asked.

"No," he answered with a smile; "but when you come here there will always be one."

"Then," she said, "I will come often, that I may save you from death."

"Oh!" he replied, "it is easier than you think to forget that one is cold."

"Yes," she returned. "And it is easier than you think for one to die."

When she was going away, she made a movement toward the easel, but he stopped her.

"Not yet," he said. "Not just yet."

She drew back.

"I have never cared to look at myself before," she said. "I do not know why I should care now. Perhaps," with the laugh again, "it is that I wish to see what you will make of _me_!"

Afterward, as she sat over her little porcelain stove in her room below, she scarcely comprehended her own mood.

"He is not like the rest," she said. "He knows nothing of the world.

He is one of the good. He cares only for his art. How simple, and kind, and pure! The little room is like a saint's cell." And then, suddenly, she flung her arms out wearily, with a heavy sigh. "Ah, _Dieu_!" she said, "how dull the day is! The skies are lead!"

A few days later she gave a sitting to an old artist whose name was Ma.s.son, and she found that he had heard of what had happened.

"And so you sit to the American," he said.

"Yes."

"Well--and you find him--?"

"I find him," she repeated after him. "Shall I tell you what I find him?"

"I shall listen with delight."

"I find him--a soul! You and I, my friend--and the rest of us--are bodies; he is a soul!"

The artist began to whistle softly as he painted.

"It is dangerous work," he said at length, "for women to play with souls."

"That is true," she answered, coldly.

The same day she went again to the room on the sixth floor. She again sat through an hour of silence in which the American painted eagerly, now and then stopping to regard her with searching eyes.

"But not as the rest regard me," she said to herself. "He forgets that it is a woman who sits here. He sees only what he would paint."

As time went by, this fact, which she always felt, was in itself a fascination.

In the chill, calm atmosphere of the place there was repose for her.

She found nothing to resent, nothing to steel herself against, she need no longer think of herself at all. She had time to think of the man in whose presence she sat. From the first she had seen something touching in his slight stooping figure, thin young face and dark womanish eyes, and after she had heard the simple uneventful history of his life, she found them more touching still.

He was a New Englander, the last surviving representative of a frail and short-lived family. His parents had died young, leaving him quite alone, with a mere pittance to depend upon, and throughout his whole life he had cherished but one aim.

"When I was a child I used to dream of coming here," he said, "and as I grew older I worked and struggled for it. I knew I must gain my end some day, and the time came when it was gained."

"And this is the end?" she asked, glancing round at the poor place.

"This is all of life you desire?"

He did not look up at her.

"It is all I have," he answered.

She wondered if he would not ask her some questions regarding herself, but he did not.

"He does not care to know," she thought sullenly. And then she told herself that he did know, and a mocking devil of a smile settled on her lip and was there when he turned toward her again.

But the time never came when his manner altered, when he was less candid and gentle, or less grateful for the favor she was bestowing upon him.

She scarcely knew how it was that she first began to know the sound of his foot upon the stairway and to listen for it. Her earliest consciousness of it was when once she awakened suddenly out of a dead sleep at night and found herself sitting upright with her hand upon her heavily throbbing heart.

"What is it?" she cried in a loud whisper. But she spoke only to herself and the darkness. She knew what it was and did not lie down again until the footsteps had reached the top of the last flight and the door above had opened and closed.

The time arrived when there was scarcely a trifling incident in his everyday life which escaped her. She saw each sign of his poverty and physical weakness. He grew paler day by day. There were days when his step flagged as he went up and down the staircase; some mornings he did not go out at all. She discovered that each Sunday he went twice to the little American chapel in the Rue de Berri, and she had seen in his room a small Protestant Bible.

"You read that?" she asked him when she first saw it.

"Yes."

She leaned forward, her look curious, bewildered, even awed.

"And you believe in--G.o.d?"

"Yes."

She resumed her former position, but she did not remove her eyes from his face, and unconsciously she put her hand up to her swelling throat.

When at length the sitting was over and she left her chair he was standing before the easel. He turned to her and spoke hesitantly.

"Will you come and look at it?" he asked.

She went and stood where he bade her, and looked. He watched her anxiously while she did so. For the first moment there was amazement in her face, then some mysterious emotion he could not comprehend--a dull red crept slowly over brow and cheek.