ts brush, the steady,
bare forearm that needed no mahlstick for support and the eyes that
were narrowed to slits as he studied his tones and wide as he painted.
Sometimes, Steele lingered near with a novel which he read aloud, but
it happened that in the final sittings there was no one save painter
and model.

It was now late in July, and the canvas had begun to take form with a
miraculous quality and glow. Perhaps, the man himself did not realize
that he could never again paint such a portrait, or any landscape that
would be comparable with it. Some men write love-letters that are
wonderful heart documents, but they write them in black and white,
with words. Saxon was not only writing a love-letter, but was painting
all that his resolve did not let him say. He was putting into the work
pent-up love of such force that it was almost bursting his heart.
Here on canvas as through some wonderful safety-valve, he was
passionately converting it all into the vivid eloquence of color.

It had been his fancy, since the picture had become something more
than a strong, preliminary sketch, that Duska should not see it until
it neared completion, and she, wishing to have her impression one
unspoiled by foretastes, had assented to the idea. Each day after the
posing ended, and while he rested, and let her rest, the face of the
canvas was covered with another which was blank. Finally came the time
to ask her opinion. The afternoon light had begun to change with the
hint of lengthening shadows. The out-door world was aglow with
gracious weather and the air had the wonderful, almost pathetic
softness that sometimes comes to Kentucky for a few days in July,
bringing, as it seems, a fragment strayed out of Indian Summer and
lost in the mid-heat of the year.

The man stood back and covered the portrait, then, when the girl had
seated herself before the easel, he stepped forward, and laid his
hand on the covering. He hesitated a moment, and his fingers on the
blank canvas trembled. He was unveiling the effort of his life, and to
him she was the world. If he had failed! Then, with a deft movement,
he lifted the concealing canvas, and waited.

For a moment, the girl looked with bated breath, then something
between a groan and a stifled cry escaped her. She turned her eyes to
him, and rose unsteadily from her seat. Her hands went to her breast,
and she wavered as though she would fall. Saxon was at her side in a
moment, and, as he support