"She was beautiful. My father did it. He had that trick of color, as you call it, or he could never have painted her. She was so slight, but she had color. And she was quick and fiery. I used to see her rage when I was very small. I believed there were coals in her eyes, and that something blew on them inside to make them blaze. I wouldn't know what it was about, only that it wasn't us she raged at--not my father or me. I could go up and catch her hand even when she frightened me. And sometimes, after a while, my father would get excited, too. He was slower to take fire, but he burned longer. And at last she would become afraid and grow quiet herself and try to soothe him. I never could tell what they were at war with." They looked in silence at the vivid young face on the canvas, a thin, daring, eager face, a face of delicate features, but strong in a perfect balance. The eyes were darkly alive. "You were young when she died?" the woman asked at last. "Too young to understand. I was eight, I think. There was a lot I shall never understand. Sometimes my father would tell me about their life here in the West, but never of the time before they came here. It always seemed to me that either he or she had quarreled with their people. They were poor when they came here. We lived in Leadville when I first remember. My mother sang in a church choir and made a little money and nights--you'll think this queer--my father played a piano in a dance hall. They had to live. Days, he painted. He had studied abroad in Paris and Munich, but he wasn't selling his pictures then. It took him years to do much of that. Sometimes they were hungry, though I didn't know it." He paused, overwhelmed by a sudden realization that he was talking much. "Tell me more," she said very quietly. "I wish to hear the rest." "Well, at the last my mother was in bed a long time, and my father worked hard to get things for her, things she must have. But one night she died--it was a cold night in winter. He and I were alone with her. I'll not soon forget that. I sat up on the cot where I slept and saw my father sitting on the bed looking down at my mother. They were both still, and he wouldn't answer or turn his head when I spoke. Then I cried, for it was cold in the little cabin and my father's stillness scared me. But I don't think he heard me crying. He kept looking down at my mother's face, even when I called to him as loud as I could. Then I was afraid to see him that way any longer, so I pulled the blankets over my head and I must have cried myself to sleep. "He was sitting the same way when I woke in the morning, still looking at my mother's face. Even when the people came to take her away he kept silent--and while they put her in the ground in a great, snowy field with little short waves all over it. And when we were back in the cabin not a word could I get from him, nor a look. He just sat on the bed again, looking at her pillow.