Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/85

A Puritan Bohemia you like to have me read you some after I've washed my dishes?"

"Certainly," said the artist.

Annabel went away. Mr. Stanton took out his notebook to examine his last sketches. There was something the matter with Wisdom, the figure for which Annabel had posed in a long red table-cloth. She had stood upon the kitchen table for it, and had tumbled, hurting her arm. He touched the drawing with a pencil, then threw the notebook away. He could not work this morning.

Standing again at the window he looked out at the fast-falling flakes of snow. The old restlessness was strong upon him. Something denied had kept him from ever feeling at home in the world.

Just now he did not care whether the poor were helped or not. He did not care about his work. One thing he wanted, and one only. That was to touch the soft, brown hair parted over Anne's forehead.

How many times, in how many places, he had lived this mood over! In the old