Five minutes of battling with wind and intense cold, and she was there. Racing up the stone steps, she paused an instant for breath. Then she entered and hurried up the broad marble stairway. At last she came to a place where a great circular leather cushioned seat in the center of a room offered opportunity for perfect repose. There she sank down, to hide her eyes with her hands until the frost and the glare of snow had left them, then to open them slowly and to squint away contentedly toward the wall which lay before her.
Before her, and a little to the left, was a painting from Ireland, the work of a great master. It was a simple thing in a way, a boy clad in humble garb shoveling snow, and a girl with a shawl thrown over her shoulders, coming down the well cleaned path. Very simple people these, but happy and kind. There were sparrows perched along the path. A very humble theme, but such masses of wonderful color! Had she not seen it, Lucile would not have believed that artists could have achieved such perfection.
To the left was an equally lovely picture; dawn on the heather, the sun rising from the dripping dewy green and a girl reaper going to her toil with the song of a lark on her lips and joy in her eye.
These were the pictures that brought rest and joy to Lucile’s half hour of leisure and helped prepare her for events that cast no shadow before them.
She had descended the marble stairs and was about to leave the building when a picture arrested her attention; a living picture of a girl. And such a girl as she was! A supple grace to her waist and shoulders, a proper curve at the ankles, and a face—such a face! Cheeks aglow with the color the frosty out-of-doors had given them. Cheeks offset by dark, deep-set eyes, made darker still by eyelashes that were like hemlocks in a snow covered valley, and a smooth oval forehead backed by a wealth of short, wavy hair. This was the picture; only faintly sketched, for behind all this beauty there was a certain strength of character, a force of will that seemed a slumbering fire gleaming from her eyes. In the background were people and marble pillars. The girl had just entered the Museum and, uncertain of her way, stood irresolute.
“She’s from the country,” Lucile whispered to herself. “Her clothes show that. But how startling, how unusual, how—how striking she is!
“She’s like the pictures I’ve been seeing, they were unusual and priceless. She is the same. And yet,” a feeling of fear and sadness swept over her, “those priceless pictures are carefully guarded night and day. I wonder if she is? She seems alone. It’s not to be wondered at, their guarding those pictures. Who would not like one for his room? Who would not love to open his eyes each morning upon the girl in the ‘Song of the Lark’? But they’d wish to possess that girl, too. A father, a mother, sister, brother, would be proud to possess her, to look at her every morning, a—anyone would. And yet, she’s not—”
Her meditations were cut short by sight of a figure standing not ten feet from her; a tall, slim, young man whose features might have been carved from marble, and in whose eyes Lucile had surprised a steely glance such as she had once caught in the beady eye of a down-swooping hawk.
And then, as if enacting her part in a play, the girl of this living picture suddenly wavered where she stood. Her face went white, then with a little, wavering cry, she crumpled in a heap on the marble floor.
Lucile could have sworn the girl was alone and uncertain of her next move. She understood what had happened. Having traveled far in the intense cold, the girl had been overcome by the heavy warmth of the museum and had fainted. The thing that happened next puzzled Lucile beyond belief.