human voice. The air was heavy, weighted with the black cold as with a pall. To breathe was painful, to move an effort.
In the desolate sky there was something that wearied, in the brooding clouds, something that saddened. It penetrated the freezing city cut by the freezing river, the splendid city with its towers and domes, its quays and bridges and its thousand spires. It entered the squares, it seized the avenues and the palaces, stole across bridges and crept among the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, gray under the gray of the December sky. Sadness, utter sadness. A fine icy sleet was falling, powdering the pavement with a tiny crystalline dust. It sifted against the window-panes and drifted in heaps along the sill. The light at the window had nearly failed, and the girl bent low over her work. Presently she raised her head, brushing the curls from her eyes.
“Jack?”
“Dearest?”
“Don’t forget to clean your palette.”
He said, “all right,” and picking up the palette, sat down upon the floor in front of the stove. His head and shoulders were in the shadow, but the firelight fell across his knees and glimmered red on the blade of the palette knife. Full in the firelight beside him stood a color-box. On the lid was carved,
J. TRENT.
École des Beaux Arts.
1870.
This inscription was ornamented with an American and a French flag.
