own room and sat down, forgetting that it was either cold or bare.
Suddenly, as he had looked at the woman's upturned face, a great
longing had seized upon him.

"I should like to paint you--I," he found himself saying to the
silence about him. "If I might paint you!"

He heard the next day who she was. The _concierge_ was ready enough to
give him more information than he had asked.

"Mademoiselle Natalie, Monsieur means," he said; "a handsome girl
that; a celebrated model. They all know her. Her face has been the
foundation of more than one great picture. There are not many like
her. One model has this beauty--another that; but she, _mon Dieu_, she
has all. A great creature, Mademoiselle."

Afterward, as the days went by, he found that she sat often to the
other artists. Sometimes he saw her as she went to their rooms or came
away; sometimes he caught a glimpse of her as he passed her open door,
and each time there stirred afresh within him the longing he had felt
at first. So it came about that one afternoon, as she came out of a
studio in which she had been giving a sitting, she found waiting
outside for her the thinly clad, frail figure of the American. He made
an eager yet hesitant step forward, and began to speak awkwardly in
French.

She stopped him.

"Speak English," she said, "I know it well."

"Thank you," he answered simply, "that is a great relief. My French is
so bad. I am here to ask a great favor from you, and I am sure I could
not ask it well in French."

"What is the favor?" she inquired, looking at him with some wonder.

He was a new type to her, with his quiet directness of speech and his
gentle manner.

"I have heard that you are a professional model," he replied, "and I
have wished very much to paint what--what I see in your face. I have
wished it from the first hour I saw you. The desire haunts me. But I
am a very poor man; I have almost nothing; I cannot pay you what the
rest do. To-day I came to the desperate resolve that I would throw
myself upon your mercy--that I would ask you to sit to me, and wait
until better fortune comes."

She stood still a moment and gazed at him.

"Monsieur," she said at length, "are you so poor as that?"

He colored a little, but it was not as if with shame.

"Yes," he answered, "I am very poor. I have asked a great deal of you,
have I not?"

She gave him still another long look.

"No," she said, "I will come to you to-morrow, if you will direct m