commodious quarters. Possibly, into her
pallid life had crept a sentimental fondness for the place for the
same reason. Her weakness was growing into feebleness. Less, each day,
she felt like going down the steep flights of stairs for a walk in the
Boulevard of St. Michael, and climbing them again on her return. More
heavily each day, she leaned on his supporting arm. All these things
St. John noted, and day by day the traces of sandy red in his mustache
and beard faded more and more into gray, and the furrow between his
pale blue eyes deepened more perceptibly.

St. John had gone one afternoon to a neighboring _atelier_, and the
girl, wandering into his room, saw a portrait standing on the easel
which St. John had formerly used for his own canvases. Most of the
pictures that came here were Marston's. This one, like the rest, was
unsigned. She sank into the deeply cushioned chair that St. John kept
for her in his own apartment, and gazed fixedly at the portrait.

It was a picture of a woman, and the woman in the chair smiled at the
woman on the canvas.

"You are very beautiful--my successor!" she murmured. For a time, she
studied the warm, vivid tones of the painted features, then, with the
same smile, devoid of bitterness, she went on talking to the other
face.

"I know you are my successor," she said, "because the enthusiasm
painted into your face is not the enthusiasm of art alone--nor," she
added slowly, "is it pity!"

Then, she noticed that one corner of the canvas caught the light with
the shimmer of wet paint. It was the corner where ordinarily an artist
affixes his name. She rose and went to the heavy studio-easel, and
looked again with her eyes close to the stretchers. The paint was
evidently freshly applied to that corner of the canvas. To her peering
gaze, it almost seemed that through the new coating of the background
she could catch a faint underlying line of red, as though it had been
a stroke in the letter of a name. Then, she noticed her father's
palette lying on a chair near the easel, and the brushes were damp.
The lake and Van Dyke brown and neutral-tint that had been squeezed
from their tubes were mixed into a rich tone on the palette, which
matched the background of the portrait. Sinking back in the chair,
fatigued even by such a slight exertion, she heard her father's
returning tread on the stairs.

From the door, he saw her eyes on the picture, but true to his promise
he remained silent, t