“I don’t believe you are really satirical, and please don’t think me impertinent if I say I do not like your irony.  The other character suits you, for, by nature, you are—­are you not?—­both merry and amiable.  The rest”—­

“‘The rest is silence.’ * * * I can remember when mere living was delightful.  I didn’t envy the birds.  That sounds sentimental to a man, doesn’t it?  But then that is the way a happy girl—­a child—­feels.  I do not envy the birds now, though I suppose it is silly for a worldly woman to talk so.”

“Whom, then, do you envy?”

There was a warm, frank light in her eyes.  “I envy the girl I was then.”

He looked down at her.  She was turning a ring about on her finger abstractedly.  He hesitated to reply.  He was afraid that he might say something to press a confidence for which she would be sorry afterward.  She guessed what was passing in his mind.

She reached out as if to touch his arm again, but did not, and said:  “I am placing you in an awkward position.  Pardon me.  It seemed to me for a moment that we were old friends—­old and candid friends.”

“I wish to be an old and candid friend,” he replied firmly.  “I honor your frankness.”

“I know,” she added hastily.  “One is safe—­with some men.”

“Not with a woman?”

“No woman is safe in any confidence to any other woman.  All women are more or less bad at heart.”

“I do not believe that as you say it.”

“Of course you do not—­as I say it.  But you know what I mean.  Women are creatures of impulse, except those who live mechanically and have lost everything.  They become like priests then.”

“Like some priests.  Yet, with all respect, it is not a confessional I would choose, except the woman was my mother.”

There was silence for a moment, and then she abruptly said:  “I know you wish to speak of that incident, and you hesitate.  You need not.  Yet this is all I can tell you.  Whoever the man was he came from Tellaire, the place where I was born.”

She paused.  He did not look, but he felt that she was moved.  He was curious as to human emotions, but not where this woman was concerned.

“There were a few notes in that woodcutter’s chant which were added to the traditional form by one whom I knew,” she continued.

“You did not recognize the voice?”

“I cannot tell.  One fancies things, and it was all twelve years ago.”

“It was all twelve years ago,” he repeated musingly after her.  He was eager to know, yet he would not ask.

“You are a clever artist,” she said presently.  “You want a subject for a picture.  You have told me so.  You are ambitious.  If you were a dramatist, I would give you three acts of a play—­the fourth is yet to come; but you shall have a scene to paint if you think it strong enough.”

His eyes flashed.  The artist’s instinct was alive.  In the eyes of the woman was a fire which sent a glow over all her features.  In herself she was an inspiration to him, but he had not told her that.  “Oh, yes,” was his reply, “I want it, if I may paint you in the scene.”