Nearest of them all to the window was the red-shirted boy: the painter gazed for an instant directly into his face. The boy's forehead was contracted with. somnolent concentration; the eyes were heavy and gentle; the complexion was smooth; on the upper lip and chin down was barely visible. Turning back to his work, the painter completed the outline; then, changing brushes, he applied a layer of flesh-tint, holding his head to one side and compressing his lips.

But his eyes no longer had the praiseworthy indifference, the untroubled tension, which had given them a few minutes before the appearance of exactitude and objectivity. The irises of pale blue darkened, as if the most subtle films had descended over them; the whites seemed delicately clouded. Once again his eyes strayed sidelong to the boy and lingered, and the skin beneath them, as far as the rise of the cheek bones, became slightly suffused, so that the imperfections. were more evident-the tracery of tiny veins and wrinkles. His next stroke was inadequate: he had to draw the rag accurately between the black lines, breathing in deeply, his pointed nose close to the windowpane.

The moisture in the air was thickening; particles of mist specked the glass and formed minutely on the boy's hair. Once, as though awakened, he looked again at the sky-gray clouds coursing from the south over the buildings-then toward the corner where a green bus was looming. The pavement was black and greasy with occasionally enough water on it to reflect the legs of pedestrians or the wheels of automobiles. He sidled between the Mexican and one of the Filipinos, hands in pockets, and contemplated the sidewalk, as though wondring if he should go. The sky sagged with imminent rain. Flags on buildings wavered sluggishly toward the north. Inside him the boy again felt warmth: he turned back into his reverie, edged through the group to the window with the green hills and the dancer. The painter, who had noticed with concern the possibility of his going, looked again into his face with eyes from which the trouble, perhaps the fear, was fading .

The hills along the top of the window were green, the sea beneath them blue; there were palm trees with long, curving leaves. For the first time the boy observed around the dancer's feet outlines of more palms, which eventually would enclose her legs in a kind of frame. The brush, laden with flesh-tint, advanced smoothly along one hip, down as far as the knee, then back-languorously, intimately. It would nearly pass beyond the black line; it would glide swiftly forward and the boy awaited the violation. But it did not occur, for the brush would halt with precision, as if triumphantly, and renew its fleshly stroking. The warmth inside him diffused; his eyelids drooped, his mouth loosened. The hills and the ocean with the sky above them expanded around him, serene and luminous. Somewhere in the serenity an ache of anticipation was becoming intolerable.

The painter worked rapidly, his eyes intent. They were perhaps a bit paler; they looked glazed and a trifle distended. The patches of color had withdrawn from the cheeks and left them undistingiushed. They were the cheeks of a man whom years had inexorably drained-rather gray and flaccid, sagging unexpectedly here and there. The lines, one on either side of the nose and reaching the corners of the mouth, had deepened, so that the face, more than ever, had an air of tension. It was as if all the life in the painter had concentrated in his eyes and in his hands. His eyes were occupied with the window, but their field of vision had widened to include the boy. Every brush stroke went beyond itself and appealed to the boy. His whole being surged toward the boy.

Unfortunately, the figure was nearly done; it was obvious that a moment

one

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