hey only understand what they
can see and touch."

"I'm sorry I spoke like that," said Christian softly; "you've never told
me about yourself."

There was something just a little cruel in the way the painter looked at
her, then seeming to feel compunction, he said quickly: "I always
hated--the peasant life--I wanted to get away into the world; I had a
feeling in here--I wanted--I don't know what I wanted! I did run away at
last to a house-painter at Meran. The priest wrote me a letter from my
father--they threw me off; that's all."

Christian's eyes were very bright, her lips moved, like the lips of a
child listening to a story.

"Go on," she said.

"I stayed at Meran two years, till I'd learnt all I could there, then a
brother of my mother's helped me to get to Vienna; I was lucky enough to
find work with a man who used to decorate churches. We went about the
country together. Once when he was ill I painted the roof of a church
entirely by myself; I lay on my back on the scaffold boards all day for a
week--I was proud of that roof." He paused.

"When did you begin painting pictures?"

"A friend asked me why I didn't try for the Academie. That started me
going to the night schools; I worked every minute--I had to get my living
as well, of course, so I worked at night.

"Then when the examination came, I thought I could do nothing--it was
just as if I had never had a brush or pencil in my hand. But the second
day a professor in passing me said, 'Good! Quite good!' That gave me
courage. I was sure I had failed though; but I was second out of sixty."

Christian nodded.

"To work in the schools after that I had to give up my business, of
course. There was only one teacher who ever taught me anything; the
others all seemed fools. This man would come and rub out what you'd done
with his sleeve. I used to cry with rage--but I told him I could only
learn from him, and he was so astonished that he got me into his class."

"But how did you live without money?" asked Christian.

His face burned with a dark flush. "I don't know how I lived; you must
have been through these things to know, you would never understand."

"But I want to understand, please."

"What do you want me to tell you? How I went twice a week to eat free
dinners! How I took charity! How I was hungry! There was a rich cousin
of my mother's--I used to go to him. I didn't like it. But if you're
starving in the winter"

Christian