Joan felt full of a great pity, but could not tell how to express it. Even her dull brains were not slow enough to credit his frank assertion that he and she were equals; but she accepted the statement in some degree, and now, with her mind wandering in his lonely existence, wondered if she might presume to express sympathy for him and proclaim herself his friend. She hesitated, for such friendship as hers, though it came hot from her little heart, seemed a ludicrous thing to offer this man. Every day of intercourse with him filled her more with wonder and with admiration; every day he occupied a wider place in her thoughts; and at that moment his utterances and his declaration of a want in life made him more human than ever to her, more easily to be comprehended, more within the reach of her understanding. And that was not a circumstance calculated to lessen her regard for him by any means. Until that day he had appeared a being far apart, whose interests and main threads of life belonged to another sphere; now he had deliberately come into her world and declared it his own. The silence became painful to Joan, but she could not pluck up courage enough to tell the artist that she at least was a friend. Finally she spoke, feeling that he waited for her to do so, and her words led to the point, for she found, in his answer to them, that he took her goodwill for granted. "Ain't you got no uncles nor nothin' o' that even, Mister Jan?" He laughed and shook his head. "Not one, Joan--not anybody in all the world to think twice about me but you." Her heart beat hard and her breath quickened, but she did not speak. Then Barron, putting down his brushes and beginning to load a pipe, that his next remark might not seem too serious, proceeded: "I call you 'friend,' Joan, because I know you are one. And I want you to think of me sometimes when I am gone, will you?" He went on filling his pipe, and then, looking suddenly into her eyes, saw there a light that was strange--a light that he would have given his soul to put into paint--a light that Joe's name never had kindled and never could. Joan wiped her hand across her mouth uneasily; then she twisted her hands behind her back, like a schoolgirl standing in class, and made answer with her eyes on the ground. "Iss, I will, then, Mister Jan; an' maybe I couldn't help it if I would." He lighted his pipe carefully before answering. "Then I shall be happy, Joan."