"Self-made, dominating man, her father; began life as a brass-moulder. 'Worked with my hands, sir,' he would tell me, holding out his stubs of fingers. Didn't want any loafers and spongers around him. He didn't say that to me, of course, but he did to her. The mother was different, like the daughter; she believed in me. She believed in anything Nell liked. Behind in her music—that's what she came to Munich for; and when she wanted to paint, hunted me up to teach her. She was eighteen and I was twenty-three. Well, you can fill in the rest. Every day, you know; sometimes at my hole in the wall, sometimes at her apartment. Went on all winter. In May he came over and wired them to meet him in Lucerne. We tried parting; sat up half the night, we three, talking it over—the dear mother helping. She loved us both by that time! I tried it for two days and then locked up my place and started. That old garden was where we met and where we continued to meet. He came down one morning to see what we were doing; we were doing that sketch—had been doing it for two weeks. Some days it got a brushful of paint and some days it didn't. You know how hard you would work when the girl you loved best in the world sat beside you looking up into your face. Sometimes the dear mother would be with us, and sometimes she would make believe she was. In the intervals she was working on the old gentleman, trying to break it to him easy. 'You have worked all your life,' she would say to him, 'and you have, outside of me, only two things left—your money and your daughter. The money won't make her happy unless there is somebody to share it with her. This boy loves her; he is clean'—I'm just quoting her words, old man; I was in those days—'honest, has an honorable profession, and will succeed the better once he has Nellie to help him and your money to relieve his mind for the time of anxiety. When he becomes famous, as he is sure to be, he will return it to you with interest.' That was the sort of talk, and it occurred about every day. Nellie would hear it and add her voice, and we would talk it over in the garden.
"One day he came down himself. The garden was up the hill behind the Schweitzerhoff—you remember it—in one of those smaller hotels—Lucerne was crowded.
"'Let me see what you two are doing,' he said, with a sort of police-officer air.
"I turned the easel toward him. The sketch was about as you see it—all except the signature and the word 'Lucerne'—that I added afterward.
"'How long have you been at this?'
"'About two weeks,' I said. I thought I'd give it its full time, so as to prove to him how carefully it had been painted.
"'Two weeks, eh?' he repeated slowly. 'Done anything else?'
"'No.'
"'What's it worth?'
"'Well, it's only a study, sir.'