“Yes, I remember,” Brooke whispered, half introspectively, as with hands clasped over her knee she looked down toward the river.
“I craved your friendship, and you gave it. Then the time came when it was too little for me; and I—what had I to offer? So I kept in the background; my work grew stale, and for the first time I half regretted the five years’ struggle, and might have given up save that, had I done so, my mother’s pride and pinching, that I might become a painter, would have been wasted.
“One day I went with some others from the Quarter to Fontainebleau to sketch out of doors. Three of us had resolved to enter a competition. For a week I had scarcely slept, for somewhere in my brain dwelt a picture, that was growing, yet would not focus. All the morning I had wandered about, and in the early afternoon, leaving the others, I threw myself down under the oaks, quite in despair and wholly miserable.
“Presently I heard a footfall on the grass. Before I could turn, a cluster of cool, golden grapes dropped in my feverish hand, and looking up and backward, I saw your face, and in the smile it wore a ray of light, of inspiration, pierced my soul. Before I had awakened from the vision, you passed on and joined your scolding chaperon.
“As for me, as I lingered there, those grapes became as drops of sacramental wine. I seized my brushes and hastily caught and kept the vision as I saw it—for to me it was the divine awakening.
“For weeks I dreamed and painted as I never had done before. My comrades laughed and said, ‘Is it love or genius?’ and old Rossi shrugged his shoulders and asked, ‘What is the difference?’
“The picture finished, I sent it to the competition, and there your rich Senator both saw and coveted it. I would not sell it,—no, never! Ah, then I never thought to; but later my mother sickened, and the price would more than buy her a good annuity. I thought again, and something said, ‘_She_ would have liked to help your mother, who is old and still plods on the tulip farm behind the poplars, which she will not leave;’ and I yielded, and I then resolved to follow you,—across the earth if must be,—for lacking you, my inspiration fled.
“Through Carolus Ashton, the amateur, well known in the Paris studios, I learned your whereabouts, and at the same time I chanced upon words of your swift sorrow in a paper at a fellow-artist’s home.