He shouted in her face in a rage: "Truly you are a woman! Who told you I would not be a model? For half an hour I have been telling you that I accept this offer of yours. Good God! This is not a place where dear poor Miss Johnsy should have to bear the pains of sickness. One day I shall paint a splendid masterpiece and we shall all leave this place — yes indeed, by God!"

Johnsy was deep in sleep when they entered the room. Sue drew the window curtains and went with Uncle Behrman into the other room, and from its window they looked at the vine climbing outside. Their glances met without a word, for the rain was coming down steadily and hard, its stream mingled with some large flakes of snow. Uncle Behrman sat in silence while Sue passed her brush over her canvas.

Sue slept only a single hour, and when she woke the next morning she found Johnsy's eyes open upon the green window curtains, and she was whispering:

"Raise the curtains and let me see."

With resentful reluctance Sue obeyed her.

But... despite the strong rains... despite the winds that had stormed all through the night, one leaf remained — the last one — upon the vine. It was green, with the yellow of withering creeping through it, dark of stem and frayed at the edges, hanging near the wall on one of the branches at a height of twenty feet from the ground.

Johnsy said: "That is the last leaf. I thought it had fallen during the night, for I heard the storming winds. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same moment."

Sue leaned toward her and hid her head among the pillows, saying: "Listen, dear. Think of me, and of what will become of me after you, if you will not think of yourself."

But Johnsy did not answer. The idea of death had taken shape in her small head and driven from it every other thought, whether of friendship or of ambition — for the greatest loneliness a human being suffers is the loneliness of one preparing to set out on that long, mysterious final journey.

The day passed. At dusk they saw the leaf hanging by its stem, and in the night a fierce north wind blew while the rain poured down in torrents.

When morning came, Johnsy mer-cilessly demanded that the window curtains be raised.

And the leaf was in its place.