m,
crushable quality of her body was accentuated by this flimsiness of
covering. She looked as though she could be drawn through a ring--as
though, between your hands, you could fold her to nothing. A thin little
kitten of silky fur and small bones might have the same feel as Sheila.

She stood up now and looked tragically and helplessly at Hudson and
tried to speak.

He backed away from the bed, beckoned to her, and met her in the other
half of the room so that the leather screen stood between them and the
dead man. They spoke in hushed voices.

"I had no notion, Miss Arundel, that--that--of--this," Hudson began in a
dry, jerky whisper. "Believe _me_, I wouldn't 'a' thought of intrudin'. I
ordered the picture there from your father a fortnight ago, and this was
the day I was to come and give it a last looking-over before I came
through with the cash, see? I hadn't heard he was sick even, much
less"--he cleared his throat--"gone beyond," he ended, quoting from the
"Millings Gazette" obituary column. "You get me?"

"Yes," said Sheila, in her voice that in some mysterious way was another
expression of the clear mistiness of her eyes and the suppleness of her
body. "You are Mr. Hudson." She twisted her hands together behind her
back. She was shivering with cold and nervousness. "It's done, you see.
Father finished it."

Hudson gave the canvas an absent glance and motioned Sheila to a chair
with a stiff gesture of his arm.

"You set down," he said.

She obeyed, and he walked to and fro before her.

"Say, now," he said, "I'll take the picture all right. But I'd like to
know, Miss Arundel, if you'll excuse me, how you're fixed?"

"Fixed?" Sheila faltered.

"Why, yes, ma'am--as to finances, I mean. You've got some funds, or some
relations or some friends to call upon--?"

Sheila drew up her head a trifle, lowered her eyes, and began to plait
her thin skirt across her knee with small, delicate fingers. Hudson
stopped in his walk to watch this mechanical occupation. She struggled
dumbly with her emotion and managed to answer him at last.

"No, Mr. Hudson. Father is very poor. I haven't any relations. We have no
friends here nor anywhere near. We lived in Europe till quite lately--a
fishing village in Normandy. I--I shall have to get some work."

"Say!" It was an ejaculation of pity, but there was a note of triumph in
it, too; perhaps the joy of the gratified philanthropist.

"Now, look-a-here, little girl, the p