ting;
and on a sudden he felt hungry. He wondered what time they would give him
supper, and he took slight account of the fact that a caprice of the wind
had torn its hood of snow from the mountain summit, and that the profile
of the Lion's Head showed almost as distinctly as in summer. He stood
before the picture which for that day at least was lost to him, and
questioned whether there would be a hearty meal, something like a dinner,
or whether there would be something like a farmhouse supper, mainly of
doughnuts and tea.

He pulled up his window and was going to lie down again, when some one
knocked, and Frank Whitwell stood at the door. "Do you want we should
bring your supper to you here, Mr. Westover, or will you--"

"Oh, let me join you all!" cried the painter, eagerly. "Is it
ready--shall I come now?"

"Well, in about five minutes or so." Frank went away, after setting down
in the room the lamp he had brought. It was a lamp which Westover thought
he remembered from the farm-house period, and on his way down he realized
as he had somehow not done in his summer sojourns, the entirety of the
old house in the hotel which had encompassed it. The primitive cold of
its stairways and passages struck upon him as soon as he left his own
room, and he found the parlor door closed against the chill. There was a
hot stove-fire within, and a kerosene-lamp turned low, but there was no
one there, and he had the photograph of his first picture of Lion's Head
to himself in the dim light. The voices of Mrs. Durgin and Cynthia came
to him from the dining-room, and from the kitchen beyond, with the
occasional clash of crockery, and the clang of iron upon iron about the
stove, and the quick tread of women's feet upon the bare floor. With
these pleasant noises came the smell of cooking, and later there was an
opening and shutting of doors, with a thrill of the freezing air from
without, and the dull thumping of Whitwell's rubber boots, and the
quicker flapping of Jombateeste's soft leathern soles. Then there was the
sweep of skirted feet at the parlor door, and Cynthia Whitwell came in
without perceiving him. She went to the table by the darkening window,
and quickly turned up the light of the lamp. In her ignorance of his
presence, he saw her as if she had been alone, almost as if she were out
of the body; he received from her unconsciousness the impression of
something rarely pure and fine, and he had a sudden compassion for her,
a