"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 Masson, 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.