Of him I saw no more. The picture kept me silent company all the day.
At evening Lili came. It was late. She brought with her a sweet, cool perfume of dewy mosses and fresh leaves and strawberry plants—sweet as honey. She came in with a dark, dreamy brilliance in her eyes and long coils of foliage in her hands.
She brought to the canary chickweed and a leaf of lettuce. She kissed me and laid wet mosses on my parching roots, and fanned me with the breath of her fresh lips. She took to the old women within a huge cabbage leaf full of cherries, having, I doubt not, gone herself without in order to bring the ruddy fruit to them.
She had been happy, but she was very quiet. To those who love the country as she and I did, and, thus loving it, have to dwell in cities, there is as much of pain, perhaps, as of pleasure in a fleeting glimpse of the lost heaven.
She was tired, and sat for a while, and did not see the painting, for it was dusk. She only saw it when she rose and turned to light the lamp; then, with a little shrill cry, she fell on her knees before it in her wonder and her awe, and laughed and sobbed a little, and then was still again, looking at this likeness of herself.
The written words took her long to spell out, for she could scarcely read, but when she had mastered them, her head sank on her breast with a flush and a smile, like the glow of the dawn over Provence, I thought.
She knew whence it came, no doubt, though there were many artists and students of art in that street.
But then there was only one who had watched her night after night as men watched the stars of old to read their fates in the heavens.
Lili was only a young ouvrière, she was only a girl of the people: she had quick emotions and innocent impulses; she had led her life straightly because it was her nature, as it is of the lilies—her namesakes, my cousins—to grow straight to the light, pure and spotless. But she was of the populace; she was frank, fearless, and strong, despite all her dreams. She was glad, and she sought not to hide it. With a gracious impulse of gratitude she turned to the lattice and leaned past me, and looked for my neighbor.