His thoughts of her never took the shape of conscious words--he loved her too much to attempt to praise her--but, as he looked at his endeavors to portray her, his mind was busy with his memories of all that loveliness--and passed from memories to day-dreams. He saw her as something that might fade before his touch. He saw her as a Princess, incognito, learning his plight, buying his pictures secretly, and, when she came to her throne, letting him serve her and worship from afar. And then he saw her even as a Galatea possible of miraculous awakening. Why not? Her eyes were the clear eyes of a woman that has never yet loved, but they were also, he felt, the eyes of one of those rare women who, when they love once, love forever. Cartaret dared, in his thoughts, to lift the heavy plaits of her blue-black hair and, with trembling fingers, again to touch that hand at the recollection of touching which his own hand tingled. Why not, indeed? Already a stranger thing had happened in his meeting her. Until that year he had not guessed at her existence; oceans divided them; the barriers of alien race and alien speech were raised high between them, and all of these things had been in vain. The existence was revealed, the ocean was crossed, the bar of sundering speech was down. He was here, close beside her, as if every event of his life had been intended to bring him. Through blind ways and up ascents misunderstood, unattracted by the many and lonely among the crowd, he had, somehow, always been making his way toward--Her. Thus Cartaret dreamed while Seraphin made a hurried journey to the rue St. André des Arts and the shop of M. Fourget. "But no, but no, but no!" Fourget's bushy brows met in a frown. "It is out of the question. Something has happened to the boy. He can no longer paint." Oh, well, at least monsieur could go to the boy's rooms and see what he had there. "No. Am I then a silly philanthropist?" Seraphin tried to produce his false dignity. What he brought out was something genuine. "I ask it from the heart," he pleaded. "Do not I, my God, know what it is to be hungry?" "Hungry?" said the dealer. "Hungry! The boy has an uncle famously rich. What is an uncle for? Hungry? You make _une bêtise_. Hungry." He called his clerk and took up his hat. "I will not go," he vowed. "Hungry, _par example_!" "Truly you will not," smiled Seraphin. "And do not tell him that I sent you: he is proud." * * * * * The sound of the door opening interrupted Cartaret's dream. He turned, a little sheepish, wholly annoyed. Spectacled Fourget stood there, looking very severe. "I was passing by," he explained. "I have not come to purchase anything, but I grow old: I was tired and I climbed your stairs to rest." It was too late to hide those portraits. Cartaret could only place for Fourget a chair with its back to them. "What have you been doing?" asked the dealer. He swung 'round toward the portraits.