wandering among caverns whose walls blaze with ragged masses of virgin
silver? What was it in the roar and turmoil of Broadway at six o'clock
that flashed before my eyes the picture of a still Breton forest where
sunlight filtered through spring foliage and Sylvia bent, half curiously,
half tenderly, over a small green lizard, murmuring: "To think that this
also is a little ward of God!"

When I first saw the watchman his back was toward me. I looked at him
indifferently until he went into the church. I paid no more attention to
him than I had to any other man who lounged through Washington Square
that morning, and when I shut my window and turned back into my studio I
had forgotten him. Late in the afternoon, the day being warm, I raised
the window again and leaned out to get a sniff of air. A man was standing
in the courtyard of the church, and I noticed him again with as little
interest as I had that morning. I looked across the square to where the
fountain was playing and then, with my mind filled with vague impressions
of trees, asphalt drives, and the moving groups of nursemaids and
holiday-makers, I started to walk back to my easel. As I turned, my
listless glance included the man below in the churchyard. His face was
toward me now, and with a perfectly involuntary movement I bent to see
it. At the same moment he raised his head and looked at me. Instantly I
thought of a coffin-worm. Whatever it was about the man that repelled me
I did not know, but the impression of a plump white grave-worm was so
intense and nauseating that I must have shown it in my expression, for he
turned his puffy face away with a movement which made me think of a
disturbed grub in a chestnut.

I went back to my easel and motioned the model to resume her pose. After
working a while I was satisfied that I was spoiling what I had done as
rapidly as possible, and I took up a palette knife and scraped the colour