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 unfathomable. Her eyes seemed to be looking beyond the canvas, into the studio where it had been painted. She made no comment on his criticism, but he guessed that it had, somehow, gone deep under the surface. In his mind was running the little song, "Cruel portrait, tu fais couler mes larmes." Sophie was now looking at him with the abstracted regard she had turned on him at luncheon, when she had said, "You've seen so little, but you see so well."

As he stood looking over at her, a wave of longing and loneliness swept over him, for what he saw was that, no matter what might happen to them, he would always be a little boy in Sophie's eyes. However much Scotch he might be able to carry like a gentleman, however telling he might be in his observations, Sophie would always have the advantage of experience and feminine divination. But the wave of longing was succeeded by another wave, a warmer wave, of assurance, for, though her attitude toward life differed fundamentally from that of Rhoda and his mother, Sophie was their sort of woman, the generous and true sort, with rich resources of imagination and charity and tenderness. As this thought grew in him his fondness for Sophie, his gratitude toward her, became blended with his passion. Deep within him new harmonies were sounding, climbing toward a full, sonorous, spreading chord that resolved an intricate pattern of youthful wonderments. As if hypnotized, he had laid down his glass and was surging a little unsteadily