He colored a little, but it was not as if with shame.
“Yes,” he answered, “I am very poor. I have asked a great deal of you, have I not?”
She gave him still another long look.
“No,” she said, “I will come to you to-morrow, if you will direct me to your room.”
“It is on the sixth floor,” he replied; “the highest of all. It is a bare little place.”
“I will come,” she said, and was turning away when he stopped her.
“I—I should like to tell you how grateful I am—” he began.
“There is no need,” she responded with bitter lightness. “You will pay me some day—when you are a great artist.” But when she reached the next landing she glanced down and saw that he still stood beneath watching her.
The next day she kept her word and went to him. She found his room poorer and barer even than she had fancied it might be. The ceiling was low and slanting; in one corner stood a narrow iron bedstead, in another a wooden table; in the best light the small window gave his easel was placed with a chair before it.