"Yes," said Somers, "I understand."
"And you'll please excuse me for speaking so free; it was only so father's feelings shouldn't get hurt by noticing maybe a look like you wanted to laugh."
"God knows I don't want to laugh," Somers burst in. "But I'm glad you spoke. It—it will be a better picture. Now may I ask you something? I want you to let me dress you—I mean put something about your neck, soft and white; and then I want to make two sketches of you—one, as Mr. Gates wishes, the head alone; the other of you sitting in the rustic chair outside."
"But—" she looked troubled—"it will be so expensive; and I know it will be foolish. If you'd just the same——"
"But I shouldn't; I want to do it. And it will not cost you anything. A hundred dollars will repay me well enough. I wish—I truly wish I could afford to do it all for nothing."
She gasped. "A hundred dollars! Oh, it ain't right. That was why he wouldn't buy the new buggy. And jest for a picture of me." But suddenly she flushed like a girl and smiled.
At this instant the old man, immaculate in his heavy black suit and glossy white shirt, appeared in the doorway bearing a tray.
"Father," said the old wife, "do you mean to tell me you are going to pay a hundred dollars jest for a picture of me?"
"Well, Mother, you know there's no fool like an old fool," he replied, jocosely; but when the old wife turned her sightless face toward the old husband's voice and he looked at her, Somers bowed his head.
He spent the afternoon over his sketches. Riding away in the twilight, he knew he had done better work than he had ever done before in his life, slight as its form might be; nevertheless he was not thinking of himself at all. He was trying to shape his own vague perception that the show of dainty thinking and the pomp of refinement are in truth amiable and lovely things, yet are they no more than the husks of life; not only under them, but under ungracious and sordid conditions, may be the human semblance of that "beauty most ancient, beauty most new," that the old saint found too late. He felt the elusive presence of something in love higher than his youthful dream; stronger than passion, fairer than delight. To this commonplace man and woman had come the deepest gift of life.