"I had a funny thought last winter," he pursued. "It seemed to me that if people turn into other things when they die--the way some folks believe, you know--that Whitman must have become a whole world when _he_ died, whirling away somewhere off in space; a fine, big, fresh world, with mountains and valleys and lakes, with big rivers and little ones, and forests and plains and people, good people and bad people, he just liked all sorts--it didn't seem to make much difference to him what they were, so they were people--and he'd carry them all on his back and breathe in and out and feel great." He laughed as if the idea still delighted him, and she laughed with him. "I'd like to have told him that," he continued, almost meditatively. "But I'll bet he often thought of it himself. I guess he wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than that." When he stopped they stood a moment smiling at each other. Then she went back to the couch with rather a businesslike air. "How old are you?" she asked. "I'm twenty-four. How old are you?" She smiled, quite disarmed by the artlessness of this brutality. "I am twenty-seven." "That's pretty old, isn't it?" he commented, gravely. "I shouldn't have said you were older than I am. Some ways you look younger. And what a lot you must have seen out yonder!" "You should go there yourself, to work, to study." She felt that he was curiously watching her lips as she spoke rather than listening to her. "Now I see it's only your profile that's sad," he began in the same detached, absent way he had spoken of the books, the way of one talking in solitude. "Your full face isn't sad; it's full of joy; but there's a droop to the profile. Here--I'll show you." He took a sketch-book from the table. "I'll show you this, now we're such good friends. I could only draw the profile because--well, that was the only thing I could look at much." She looked and saw herself on three pages of the book, quick little drawings, all of the side face. "I didn't dream you had seen me enough," she said. "And you have everything from cap to boots, and Cooney----" "I knew Cooney, and I've--well--I've watched you some when you didn't know." "Certainly you never watched me when I did know," she retorted. "I should think not!" He laughed uneasily. "But you see the sadness there. I tried to locate it, but I couldn't. I only knew it was there because I found it in the sketches when they were done. I think I caught the figure pretty well in that one. Stand that way now, won't you?" She rose graciously. "Here's your quirt, and catch your skirts the way you've done there--that's it. Yes, I got that long line down from the shoulder. It's a fine line. You are beautiful," he continued critically. "I like the way your neck goes up from your shoulders, and your head has a perky kind of a tilt, as if you wouldn't be easy to bluff."