The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1904-03-23

anu lHcTe WAS luuCu yet 10 QO. Ter
haps insufficient nourishment and
want Of exercise and hard work all
told upon frame that was never
of the strongest. Certainly the
Beauty fell i'll one evening, fainting
as he laid aside his brushes, and was
in the torments Of high fever for
many weeks. The friends who
heard of it and came to see him
found Tim, with q white face, in
stalled as nurse. She promptly or
dered them away.
"Get to your work, boys,a she
said as she thrust them out of the
door. "Hos wants a woman here.
I've nursed some of you before;
leave me to it now. I'll tell you if I
want help. But it is little thing"
Surely man was never watched
and tended on this sorrowful earth
before or since as Tim watched
and tended the Beauty. In all his
worst rawlings she never left him.
To the kindly doctor who suggested
that she must rest she held out a
firm young hand, and with all her
eyes in the appeal begged that he
would test her pulse.
Il am firm and quiet and strorg,"
She said steadily. "What more
would you want ?''
And the doctor locked perplexed,
but patted her cheek and left her
with the Beauty.
She found that all her patients
rawlings took but one turn. Where
soever they might begin they came
back always to one point, and that
one point was his unfinished pic
ture. Now it was finished, he
thought, and had been accepted.
Again he would cry bitterly that
the days were passing and that they
were holding him back from it and
that it would never be completed in
time, and he would struggle to get
out of bed, even in his awful weak
ness, to reach the picture.
Tim well knew that the time was
short, and she thought with despair
of the uncompleted canvas and of
all that it was to have done and of
all that it would never do now. She
had had a half formed hope in her
mind at first that he might some
times in his delirium cry her name,
and she listened eagerly, but he
spoke always of the picture.
At last one day, when it wanted
but week to the time when the
pictures must be sent in, he sud-
denly cried her name, and she ran
to him and bent over him.
'HFim-Tim," he whispered, scarce
y knowing her, :'the picture, the
picture! Will it never be done
will it never be done? o God, how
they hold me back! Will no one
help me? It is my life-my life!"
He exhausted himself presently
and lay quiet, and she stole away,
with tear bedimmed eyes, into his
studio and uncovered the great pic
ture. So near and yet so far, she
thought. If he could but start now
the picture might be completed.
She went softly back into the
room again and found him appar-
emily sleeping. Gradually she Slip
ped down beside the bed on her
knees and raised her young face,
and prayer stole up out of her
careless heart, the first that her
abandoned life had known.
She knelt there for long time,
with her face hidden, then rose
quietly and pressed her lips to his
and went out to the studio, as one
walks in a dream, with new,
strange light on her face, and took
up the brushes and palette fearless
ly and set to work.
Day after day she painted with.
out hesitation, kissing his lips al
ways before she started, telling no
one, but keeping the studio locked
from all eyes.
She grew thin and weak and i'll.
All the. bright and buoyant young
life of her seemed to be absorbed
in her work. With dreaming
wonder, that was in itself the great
est wonder of all, she saw the pic
ture grow under her hands until it
was finished.
They had missed her couple of
days and, seeking her, found her
lying peacefully at the foot of the
easel. The Beeuty was better and
eonvalescent and knew them and III
quired for her. AT first they thought
she was asleep from exhaustion, but
on trying to rouse her they found
that she was dead. The old doctor
said that it was heart ..-o,.ble, and
she had died: in her sleep.
@ The Beauty never knew. In his
delirinm he had joined 80 often the
real and the unreal that he came to
believe that he had completed the
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