took no notice,--perhaps it would have been unendurable to notice,--but
she stepped forward as usual, and climbed to the platform without
faltering, and he posed her for the head and shoulders. Then, to study
the effect from different angles, he went behind the easels, passing
from one to another. As he returned, with the thought of giving her
pleasure, he brought along with him one of the sketches of herself and
held it out before her.

"Do you recognize it?" he asked.

She refused to look at first. Then arousing herself from her
indifference she glanced at it. But when she beheld there what she had
never seen--how great had been her love of him; when she beheld there
the light now gone out and realized that it meant the end of happy days
with him, she shut her eyes quickly and jerked her head to one side
with a motion for him to take the picture away. But she had been
brought too close to her sorrow and suddenly she bent over her hands
like a snapped reed and the storm of her grief came upon her.

They started up to get to her. They fought one another to get to her.
They crowded around the platform, and tried to hide her from one
another's eyes, and knelt down, and wound their arms about her, and
sobbed with her; and then they lifted her and guided her behind the
screens.

"Now, if you will allow them," he said, when she came out with them, one
of them having lent her a veil, "some of these young friends will go
home with you. And whenever you wish, whenever you feel like it, come
back to us. We shall be ready. We shall be waiting. We shall all be
glad."