Perhaps she is asleep."

Sitka Charley looked at me in swift surprise, then back at the picture.
It was evident that he had not reasoned the impression.

"Perhaps she is asleep," he repeated. He studied it closely. "No, she
is not asleep. The shoulders show that she is not asleep. I have seen
the shoulders of a woman who cried. The mother is crying. It is a very
great sickness."

"And now you understand the picture," I cried.

He shook his head, and asked, "The little girl--does it die?"

It was my turn for silence.

"Does it die?" he reiterated. "You are a painter-man. Maybe you know."

"No, I do not know," I confessed.

"It is not life," he delivered himself dogmatically. "In life little
girl die or get well. Something happen in life. In picture nothing
happen. No, I do not understand pictures."

His disappointment was patent. It was his desire to understand all
things that white men understand, and here, in this matter, he failed. I
felt, also, that there was challenge in his attitude. He was bent upon
compelling me to show him the wisdom of pictures. Besides, he had
remarkable powers of visualization. I had long since learned this. He
visualized everything. He saw life in pictures, felt life in pictures,
generalized life in pictures; and yet he did not understand pictures when
seen through other men's eyes and expressed by those men with color and
line upon canvas.

"Pictures are bits of life," I said. "We paint life as we see it. For
instance, Charley, you are coming along the trail. It is night. You see
a cabin. The window is lighted. You look through the window for one
second, or for two seconds, you see something, and you go on your way.
You saw maybe a man writing a letter. You saw something without
beginning or end. Nothing happened. Yet it was a bit of life you saw.
You remember it afterward. It is like a picture in your memory. The
window is the frame of the picture."

I could see that he was interested, and I knew that as I spoke he had
looked through the window and seen the man writing the letter.

"There is a picture you have painted that I understand," he said. "It is
a true picture. It has much meaning. It is in your cabin at Dawson. It
is a faro table. There are men playing. It is a large game. The limit
is off."

"How do you know the limit is off?" I broke in excitedly, for here was
where my work could be tried out on an unbiassed judge who knew life