Afterward, as the days went by, he found that she sat often to the other artists. Sometimes he saw her as she went to their rooms or came away; sometimes he caught a glimpse of her as he passed her open door, and each time there stirred afresh within him the longing he had felt at first. So it came about that one afternoon, as she came out of a studio in which she had been giving a sitting, she found waiting outside for her the thinly clad, frail figure of the American. He made an eager yet hesitant step forward, and began to speak awkwardly in French.
She stopped him.
“Speak English,” she said, “I know it well.”
“Thank you,” he answered simply, “that is a great relief. My French is so bad. I am here to ask a great favor from you, and I am sure I could not ask it well in French.”
“What is the favor?” she inquired, looking at him with some wonder.
He was a new type to her, with his quiet directness of speech and his gentle manner.
“I have heard that you are a professional model,” he replied, “and I have wished very much to paint what—what I see in your face. I have wished it from the first hour I saw you. The desire haunts me. But I am a very poor man; I have almost nothing; I cannot pay you what the rest do. To-day I came to the desperate resolve that I would throw myself upon your mercy—that I would ask you to sit to me, and wait until better fortune comes.”
She stood still a moment and gazed at him.
“Monsieur,” she said at length, “are you so poor as that?”