! I'll give you the order. Not a
mere portrait--a picture." And he had agreed, and the "jung" lady had
consented. The two had but just now left the studio. To-morrow a
servant would bring violin, music-rack, etc.; the ladies would follow,
and then--

"You hear music, anyhow," said the artist. That was his gentle way of
intimating that Claude was not invited to be a looker-on.

On the next day, Claude, in his nook above, with the studio below shut
from view by the curtain of his inner window, heard the ladies come.
He knows they are these two, for one voice, the elder, blooms out at
once in a gay abundance of words, and the other speaks in soft, low
tones that, before they reach his ear, run indistinguishably together.

Soon there comes the sound of tuning the violin, while the older voice
is still heard praising one thing and another, and asking careless
questions.

"I suppose that cotton cloth covers something that is to have a public
unveiling some day, doesn't it?"

Claude cannot hear the answer; the painter drops his voice even below
its usual quiet tone. But Claude knows what he must be saying; that
the cloth covers merely a portrait he is finishing of a young man who
has sat for it to please a wifeless, and, but for him, childless, and
fondly devoted father. And now he can tell by the masculine step, and
the lady's one or two lively words, that the artist has drawn away the
covering from his (Claude's) own portrait. But the lady's young
companion goes on tuning her instrument--"tink, tink, tink;" and now
the bow is drawn.

"Why, how singular!" exclaims the elder lady. "Why, my dear, come here
and see! Somebody has got your eyes! Why, he's got your whole state of
mind, a reduplication of it. And--I declare, he looks almost as good
as you do! If--I"--

The voice stops short. There is a moment's silence in which the unseen
hearer doubts not the artist is making signs that yonder window and
curtain are all that hide the picture's original, and the voice says
again,--

"I wish you'd paint my picture," and the violin sounds once more its
experimental notes.

But there are other things which Claude can neither hear, nor see, nor
guess. He cannot see that the elder lady is already wondering at, and
guardedly watching, an agitation betrayed by the younger in a tremor
of the hand that fumbles with her music-sheets and music-stand, in the
foot that trembles on the floor, in the reddened cheek, and in the
bitten