Several weeks elapsed before he saw Miss Price again, for he promptly forgot his promise to visit her studio and inspect her work. His own work was very absorbing just then, and the short winter days all too brief for its accomplishment. He was struggling to complete the large canvas that Miss Snell had so volubly admired during her visit, and it really seemed to be progressing. But the weather changed suddenly from frost to thaw, and he woke one morning to find little runnels of dirty water coursing down his window and dismally dripping into the muddy street below. It made him feel blue, and his big picture, which had seemed so promising the day before, looked hopelessly bad in this new mood. So he determined to take a day off, and, after his coffee, strolled out into the Luxembourg Gardens. There the statues were green with mouldy dampness, and the paths had somewhat the consistency of very thin oatmeal porridge. Suddenly the sun came out brightly, and he found a partially dry bench, where he sat down to brood upon the utter worthlessness of things in general and the Luxembourg statuary in particular. The sunny façade of the palace glittered in the brightness. One of his own pictures hung in its gallery. "It is bad," he said to himself, "hopelessly bad," and he gloomily felt the strongest proof of its worthlessness was its popularity with the public. He would probably go on thinking this until the weather or his mood changed.
As his eyes strayed from the palace, he glanced up a long vista between leafless trees and muddy grass-plats. A familiar figure in a battered straw hat and scanty green cloak was advancing in his direction; the wind, blowing back the fringe of disfiguring short hair, disclosed a pure unbroken line of delicate profile, strangely simple, and recalling the profiles in Botticelli's lovely fresco in the Louvre. Miss Price, for it was she, carried a painting-box, and under one arm a stretcher that gave her infinite trouble whenever the wind caught it. As she passed, the Painter half started up to join her, but she gave him such a cold nod that his intention was nipped in the bud. He felt snubbed, and sank back on his bench, taking a malicious pleasure in observing that, womanlike, she ploughed through all the deepest puddles in her path, making great splashes about the hem of her skirt, that fluttered out behind her as she walked, for her hands were filled, and she had no means of holding it up.
The Painter resented his snubbing. He was used to the most humble deference from the art students of the quarter, who hung upon his slightest word, and were grateful for every stray crumb of his attention.
He now lost what little interest he had previously taken in his surroundings. Just before him in a large open space reserved for the boys to play handball was a broken sheet of glistening water reflecting the blue sky, the trees rattled their branches about in the wind, and now and then a tardy leaf fluttered down from where it had clung desperately late into the winter. The gardens were almost deserted. It was too early for the throng of beribboned nurses and howling infants who usually haunt its benches. One or two pedestrians hurried across the garden, evidently taking the route to make shortcuts to their destinations, and not for the pleasure of lounging among its blustery attractions.
After idling an hour on his bench, he went to breakfast with a friend who chanced to live conveniently near, and where he made himself very disagreeable by commenting unfavorably on the work in progress and painting in particular. Then he brushed himself up and started off for the rue Notre Dame des Champs, where Miss Snell's studio was situated. It was one of a number huddled together in an old and rather dilapidated building, and the porter at the entrance gave him minute directions as to its exact location, but after stumbling up three flights of dark stairs he had no trouble in finding it, for Miss Snell's name, preceded by a number of initials, shone out from a door directly in front of him as he reached the landing.
He knocked, and for several minutes there was a wild scurrying within and a rattle and clash of crockery. Then Miss Snell appeared at the door, and exclaimed, in delighted surprise:
"How do you do? We had quite given you up."
She looked taller and longer than ever swathed in a blue painting-apron and grasping her palette and brushes. She had to apologize for not shaking hands with him, because her fingers were covered with paint that had been hastily but ineffectually wiped off on a rag before she answered his knock.
He murmured something about not coming before because of his work, but she would not let him finish, saying, intensely,
"We know how precious every minute is to you."