Bartell smiled himself back into the more crowded room, and Ewing waited, apprehending talk like that he had lately undergone. But he found that this woman who had stared at him so curiously was not voluble. For a long time she remained silent. Once he glanced up to observe that her eyes were closed, and seized the moment to study her face. He thought she was very old--sixty at least. Yet the face showed strength in its frailness. The cheeks, looking brown under the plenteous white hair, were lined but not withered, and the curve from brow to chin revealed more than a suggestion of self-will. A dainty but imperious old lady he thought her. He might have believed himself forgotten but for an intimation of waiting thrown out by her manner, a suggestion of leaning toward him, breathless, one of the gloved hands poising as if to alight on his arm. He found this less tiring than the compulsion he had lately been under to agree with a livelier woman about matters strange to him. And yet he was relieved when she opened her eyes as if to speak. He regarded her with puzzled but kind expectancy. At last she said, and he understood that her voice was unnaturally tight and hard: "Mr. Bartell tells me that you are a painter, Mr. Ewing." "I'm trying to be--they are very kind here." "Your father was Gilbert Ewing--a painter?" "Oh, you _knew_ him?" He thrilled at the thought, but was disappointed. "Mr. Bartell mentioned his name--and yours." "He was a painter, yes; he died out there in Colorado." She seemed to shudder ever so slightly and her eyes closed again. "And your--your mother?" The words were hardly more than a whisper. "My mother died when I was very small." Again she seemed to wince under a sting. But now she fell away from that waiting tenseness with which she had held him. The hand that had hovered over his arm fell limply into her lap, and she leaned back in her chair. "I'm afraid you aren't very well," he ventured. "The rooms are close." She opened her eyes, with no sign of having heard. Sitting forward in her chair she gazed ahead with narrowed eyes. "I am an old woman and dull, Mr. Ewing, but I should like to have you come and see me." "I'll be glad to come," he answered promptly enough, though he could not keep surprise from his voice. "Come to-morrow, if you will, and pardon an old woman's whim in asking you with so little ceremony." "I will come, of course." He wondered if she felt a city loneliness like his own. "Thank you. I shall be in after four." She gave him a card from a small silver case at her belt. "The room _is_ close. You may fetch me tea."