The thin lips drew to a line. They did not speak. She took off her thimble and laid it in its velvet sheath. She gathered up the scattered skeins of linen and silk, straightening each with a little pull, and laid them in the case. She stabbed a needle into the tiny cushion and dropped the scissors into their pocket. Then she rose deliberately, her chair scraping the polished boards as she pushed it back from the frame.
He looked up, a half frown between the unseeing eyes.
She lifted the embroidery-frame from its rest and turned toward the door. "I have other work to do if I am not to pose for you," she said quietly.
He made no reply.
Half-way to the door she paused, looking back. "Herr Mündler was here while you were out. We owe him twenty-five guldens. It was due the fifth." She spoke the words crisply. Her face gave no sign of emotion.
He nodded indifferently. "I know. I shall see him." The soft whistle was resumed.
"There is a note from the Rath, refusing you the pension again." She drew a paper from the work-box in her hand and held it toward him.
He turned half about in his chair. "Don't worry, Agnes," he said. The tone was pleading. He did not look at the paper or offer to take it. His eyes returned to the easel. A gentle light filled them.
She dropped the paper into the box, a smile on her lips, and moved toward the easel. She stood for a moment, looking from the pictured face of the Christ to the glowing face above it. Then she turned again to the door. "It's very convenient to be your own model," she said with a laugh. The door clicked behind her.
He sat motionless, the grave, earnest eyes looking into the eyes of the picture. Now and then he stirred vaguely. But he did not lift his hand or touch the brushes beside it. Gazing at each other, in the fading light of the low window, the two faces were curiously alike. There was the same delicate modelling of lines, the same breadth between the eyes, the long, flowing locks, the full, sensitive lips, and in the eyes the same look of deep melancholy—touched with a subtle, changing, human smile that drew the beholder. It disarmed criticism and provoked it. Except for the halo of mocking and piercing thorns, the living face might have been the pictured one below it. The look of suffering in one was shadowed in the other.