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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 The patches of color had withdrawn from the cheeks and left them undistingiushed.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 would arrive when the situation would change. Indeed, the two Filipinos had already drifted away from the group. With a swift sideways movement of the rag the painter obliterated the dancer's legs from the knees down, even a section of the palm leaves around them. The boy's face reflected the gesture. His attention deepened while the painter was drawing in the outlines again. The boy was so evidently absorbed that the painter was able to relax and to work more slowly. His brush crept over the glass and he appeared insolently at ease.

But it was impossible to compete with the rain, which began to fall imperceptibly at first, then in larger drops that smacked on the pavement. Soon one could hear the rustle of it above the noise of the busses. On the windshields of passing cars the wipers twitched back and forth. The lines running to the corners of the painter's mouth were deeper; once his hand, become suddenly less rigorous, allowed the brush to deviate; he had to clean away the color and begin again. The boy glanced around and saw that he was almost the only one left now among the spectators. All had gone except the Mexican, who had crossed the sidewalk to the curb and was about to wander away. The rain brought back the street and the buildings, the whisper and drip-drip of the rain restored the aimless day, the damp on his face recalled him to himself. He stepped away from the window as far as the curb and loitered near the Mexican. Then he walked along the street toward the north, because the rain would be behind him, and he drew closer to the shop fronts, which really gave no shelter.

The painter watched him go-his red shirt and his blond hair. He saw him reach the corner and linger, again undecided. He watched him cross the street and drift on. Then he lost sight of him and did not see him again until he was so far away (just a red splotch in the rainy dullness) that seeing him was hardly worth the trouble. The melancholy of the rain filled the bar window. Behind the plate glass, his brush dangling, he studied the figure of the dancer. Suddenly, in a raging upward rush from the depths of lifelong defeat, desire struck him to blot her out with an angry sweep of his arm, to wipe every trace of her from the windowpane. But the moment passed. Accustomed to disappointment (even to resignation), he plunged a brush into color and resumed his painting.

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