Noel sat down.  The soldier had resumed his old attitude, and the little girl her nursing of the doll, though her big eyes still watched the visitor.  Overcome by strangeness, Noel made no attempt to talk.  And presently through the double doors the painter and his wife came in.  She was a thin woman in a red wrapper, with hollow cheeks, high cheek-bones, and hungry eyes; her dark hair hung loose, and one hand played restlessly with a fold of her gown.  She took Noel’s hand; and her uplifted eyes seemed to dig into the girl’s face, to let go suddenly, and flutter.

“How do you do?” she said in English.  “So Pierre brought you, to see me again.  I remember you so well.  You would not let him paint you.  Ah! que c’est drole!  You are so pretty, too.  Hein, Monsieur Barra, is not mademoiselle pretty?”

The soldier gave his heavy giggle, and resumed his scrutiny of the floor.

“Henriette,” said Lavendie, “sit down beside Chica—­you must not stand.  Sit down, mademoiselle, I beg.”

“I’m so sorry you’re not well,” said Noel, and sat down again.

The painter stood leaning against the wall, and his wife looked up at his tall, thin figure, with eyes which had in them anger, and a sort of cunning.

“A great painter, my husband, is he not?” she said to Noel.  “You would not imagine what that man can do.  And how he paints—­all day long; and all night in his head.  And so you would not let him paint you, after all?”

Lavendie said impatiently:  “Voyons, Henriette, causez d’autre chose.”

His wife plucked nervously at a fold in her red gown, and gave him the look of a dog that has been rebuked.

“I am a prisoner here, mademoiselle, I never leave the house.  Here I live day after day—­my husband is always painting.  Who would go out alone under this grey sky of yours, and the hatreds of the war in every face?  I prefer to keep my room.  My husband goes painting; every face he sees interests him, except that which he sees every day.  But I am a prisoner.  Monsieur Barra is our first visitor for a long time.”

The soldier raised his face from his fists.  “Prisonnier, madame!  What would you say if you were out there?” And he gave his thick giggle.  “We are the prisoners, we others.  What would you say to imprisonment by explosion day and night; never a minute free.  Bom!  Bom!  Bom!  Ah! les tranchees!  It’s not so free as all that, there.”

“Every one has his own prison,” said Lavendie bitterly.  “Mademoiselle even, has her prison—­and little Chica, and her doll.  Every one has his prison, Barra.  Monsieur Barra is also a painter, mademoiselle.”

“Moi!” said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand.  “I paint puddles, star-bombs, horses’ ribs—­I paint holes and holes and holes, wire and wire and wire, and water—­long white ugly water.  I paint splinters, and men’s souls naked, and men’s bodies dead, and nightmare—­nightmare—­all day and all night—­I paint them in my head.”  He suddenly ceased speaking and relapsed into contemplation of the carpet, with his bearded cheeks resting on his fists.  “And their souls as white as snow, les camarades,” he added suddenly and loudly, “millions of Belgians, English, French, even the Boches, with white souls.  I paint those souls!”