Angela touched his arm.
“Angela! that boy! that boy!”
“Is he the son of the unhappy man who spent the night here?”
“Yes—”
The young peasant sent out a call from the barn, where he was flinging the hay lightly with a heavy pitchfork into the loft.
“What are you going to do with our boy? He does not care for books; he has no talent for painting? You are not ambitious for him—” There was a note of reproach in her voice.
“Yes, very ambitious. I want him to be what nature has made him, a peasant; nothing could be nobler.”
That night the artist remained in his studio to finish the sketch; he worked for hours with intense concentration, until the pencil dropped from his numb fingers. Then he threw himself down on the couch, but couldn’t rest. Ashes strewn over the fire had smothered but not extinguished it; the flames broke through. That boy! The Past living again, with all its wonder of passion, its uncontrollable love. He went to the window, leaned out; a white mist hovered over the dark valley. His eyes pierced it deeper. He was again a desperate man, holding a woman in his arms—Mad Martin!...
When the sketch was finished he painted it on ivory, framed it in silver, put it in a velvet case, and sent it to Joseph as a souvenir of their meeting. It was a speaking likeness; it went over the sea, a message to his first love.