Plot

At the top of a three-story building in New York's old Greenwich Village, Sue and Johnsy had their studio - Johnsy a frail, tiny girl from California, and Sue from Maine. It is November and pneumonia stalked about the colony, touching finally the little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs, and Johnsy lay scarcely moving on her iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house. The doctor had told Sue that Johanna had one chance in ten, "and that chance is for her to want to live." But she had made up her mind that she was not going to get well, and as she counted the leaves drop one by one from an old ivy vine on the brick wall she became weaker and weaker. Convinced that when the last leaf falls she will go, too, she makes no effort to live. Sue, heartbroken, tells old Behrman, the painter on the floor beneath them, of Johnsy's fancy. Behrman, always scoffing at tenderness, has constituted himself personal guardian of the two girls. Always about to paint a masterpiece, he is now past sixty and has never yet begun it. That night a cold, persistent rain falls and when morning comes Johnsy, with dull wide-open eyes, asks Sue to pull up the shade. Drearily she obeys, but lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind one leaf is still visible against the pane. And then Johnsy begins to realize her wickedness in wanting to die and asks for some broth. That day old Behrman is taken to the hospital with pneumonia. He was found by the janitor with his shoes and clothing wet through, with a lantern still lighted near by and a palette with green and yellow colors. Behrman had painted on the window pane his masterpiece the night the last leaf fell from the vine.

Moving Picture World, December 15, 1917