Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/309

 we tell beside the dead, one for every year, and hope, and joy that is gone."

"Madame is poetic," and he touched the throat of the portrait with his brush. She pulled up the lace about her own throat a little higher. He saw it, and took away some of the fairness from the one he had painted. "It is too white," he whispered, and she writhed. Slowly she rose, and going to her cloak felt in its pocket.

"Monsieur," she asked, "is it too late to paint this collar round my throat? It is grey squirrel, and I have possessed it many years." His eye fell on it, and with a little start he turned away.

"It is too late," he answered firmly, and deepened the line about the mouth.

"You work so quickly," she pleaded; "paint it in, monsieur. You have been hard to me." The last words were almost whispered. "But now this last sitting you will be a little gentle: we shall never meet again," she added sadly in a voice that sounded prophetic.

"There is no time;" but he seemed wavering.

"But the portrait is nearly done," she said; "see, I will fasten the collar here," and she put it round part of the ornamentation on the back of the chair on which she had been sitting. "Try and paint it, monsieur, while I rest a little, for I am tired and cold."

She seemed weary. There was something pathetic in her demeanour as she went slowly towards one of the chairs by the little table. Perhaps it softened him, for he began to paint in the grey squirrel. A long silence.

Once his eyes wandered to her as she sat over the fire, her face turned from him, but her beautiful figure thrown into relief by the blaze from the logs. Presently she got up, and walked round the studio, and again he listened gratefully to the rustle of her dress, it was so unusual a sound in that room.

"Monsieur," she said, "there is a canvas behind the portfolio in this corner. It has its face turned towards the wall, but if there is a picture on it, may I see it?"

"If I wished it seen, its face would not be towards the wall; therefore, madame must excuse it." She moved away, and stood by his side, the left side, close to the hand that held the palette. He went on with his work almost as if he did not know she was there. The grey collar was nearly finished; but he lingered over the picture, touching it here and there, with a little stroke, almost as if he were dreaming. He brushed away a wrinkle that showed in the throat above the fur. She went a little closer.

"Henri," she said, softly, "the chestnuts