ay: "Well I must be back now. Little Reverdy is
coming over for an early dinner." "Ah, but just this one picture," he
would say, "it will only take a few minutes. I want you to see this. It
is a great work and something may happen. I may forget to bring you
again." Then we would walk in and out of the cold and gloom of the
church after having stared the picture into vividness.

During my morning work my friendship with Mrs. Winchell ripened rapidly.
We had an excellent start in the circumstance that we were Americans. We
knew of cities, of some people in common. Abigail had come from
Connecticut and that, in a sense, laid a foundation for our
conversations. We were working together, she with painting, I with
drawing and etching. We criticized and suggested concerning each other's
work. Or we put down our brushes and pencils and talked of life. In this
way at last she knew of my going to America as a youth of eighteen, of
the farm, of Zoe, of my marriage, my life in Chicago, my long friendship
with Douglas, and lastly of Dorothy's death at sea. Her eyes would look
intently into mine. And when I told her that I considered my life
practically wasted she said: "Do you know every one's life is wasted;
nearly every one. Few find their work and pursue it. Most of us are
drawn aside, or tripped, or blinded. Your friend Douglas seems to me to
have had a wasted life. As you tell me all this I see you as a man of
tremendous will drawn into an accidental path, not his real path. You
are an artist at heart. I don't mean that you will ever be a great
etcher, though one cannot tell; I mean that all this turbulence,
sordidness, American hurry, waste, vulgarity, agitation, politics, did
not belong to you. But what right have I to talk? My life is a waste
too."

Little by little I learned from her what her life had been, what its
central impulse was. She was a poor girl who hungered for opportunity.
She had looked with critical eyes upon marriageable men. I wondered if
she had been attractive to many men, if many had had the discernment to
see what she was. If a young woman marries an elderly man of wealth it
is probable that no young man of wealth has come to her at the favorable
hour; and probable, too, that no man of merely compelling magnetism has
been interested in her. Mr. Winchell was kindly, a noble nature; he gave
her a tender, but only a paternal love. But through him she had
traveled; she had had the beauty of life for which