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Presently he would return to his shell again. For a moment a model had grown more to him than a picture; and he told himself that he must obey Nature in order adequately to serve Art. He picked up the handkerchief he had lent Joan, looked at the dampness of the tear-stains, and then spread it in the sun to dry.
The once bare, ugly room had been transformed into quite a pretty chamber, with carpet and curtains and wall-paper and some pretty furniture. The father had at last done a sensible thing for his daughter. Carlia slept on peacefully. She had not even washed away the tear-stains from her cheeks, and her nut-brown hair lay in confusion about her head. Poor, dear girl!
Around the little newsboy huddled a group of street gamins, counting out their few pennies, and talking excitedly of how they would buy him some flowers. There were tear-stains down their grimy cheeks and it was plain they were pitying him, they who had perhaps yet to tread the paths of sin and deprivation and sorrow for many long years. And the Presence there! So near them, with the pitying eyes!
"Oh, I'm free to acknowledge that I performed the duties at that bedside very reluctantly," Susan answered. "I had many a cry over my hard fate. Indeed, I believe I always had to wash off the tear-stains before going to the task. I can recall now just how the little red-eyed girl looked standing before the glass with towel and brush.
Her eyes were wide open and stared full at me, yet in such a blank way that I knew she did not hear me. The contraction of the brows, the knotted appearance of the forehead, and the rigor of the face told me she was under an all-but-breaking tension. There were tear-stains from tears which long since had ceased to flow. The fire of fever had dried them up.
And he looked at her, at her pretty face, now so white and careworn, at her eyes, at the tear-stains on her cheeks, and his whole heart went out to her. "Caroline, dearie," he faltered, "forgive me for comin' here, won't you? I had to come. I couldn't leave you alone; I couldn't rest, thinkin' of you alone in your trouble.
His hands were thrust into his pockets and there were tear-stains on his cheeks. "Good morning," said Everychild. "Don't bother me," said the boy. "I'm running away." "I didn't see you run," said Everychild. The boy stopped and looked at Everychild reproachfully. "It's called running away," he said; "though everybody knows you don't run, and for that matter, there's no away about it.
She was turned towards her mother, her face averted from him; he could see the tear-stains, the swollen eyelids, the lips yet quivering: he stooped down, and bent to kiss the little hand that lay listless by her side. As his hot breath neared that hand it was twitched away, and a shiver ran through the whole prostrate body.
The fat man in spectacles appeared again; in spite of his serious exterior, he fancied himself a comic actor, and recited a scene from Gogol, this time without eliciting a single token of approbation. There was another glimpse of the flute-player; another thunder-clap from the pianist; a boy of twelve, frizzed and pomaded, but with tear-stains on his cheeks, thrummed some variations on a fiddle.
That night, when the waning moon got far enough on her westward way to surmount the old house on the knoll beside the Noonoon and cast its shadow in the deep clear water, the silver beams strayed through a little window facing the great ranges, and found the features of a beautiful sleeper disfigured by weeping; but youth's rest was sound despite the tear-stains, and the old moon smiled at such ephemeral sorrow.
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