I shall do my best to express my appreciation
here"--he indicated the canvas on the easel.

When his sitter was posed to his liking, and the artist, with a few bold,
sweeping, strokes of the charcoal had roughed out his subject on the
canvas, and was bending over his color-box--he said, casually, to put her
at ease, "You came alone this afternoon, did you?"

"Oh, no, indeed! I brought Louise with me. I shall always bring her, or
some one. One cannot be too careful, you know," she added with simulated
artlessness.

The painter, studying her face, replied mechanically "No indeed."

As he turned back to his canvas, Mrs. Taine continued, "I left her in the
house, with a box of chocolates and a novel. I felt that you would rather
we were alone."

"Please don't look down," said the artist. "I want your eyes about
here"--he indicated a picture on the wall, a little back and to the left
of where he stood at the easel.

After this, there was silence in the studio, for a little while. Mrs.
Taine obediently kept the pose; her eyes upon the point the artist had
indicated; but--as the man, himself, was almost directly in her line of
vision--it was easy for her to watch him at his work, when his eyes were
on his canvas or palette. The arrangement was admirable in that it
relieved the tedium of the hour for the sitter; and gave her face an
expression of animated interest that, truthfully fixed upon the canvas,
should insure the fame and future of any painter.

It would be quite too much to say that Aaron King became absorbed in his
occupation. Thorough master of the tools of his craft, and of his own
technic, as well; he was interested in the mere exercising of his skill,
but he in no sense lost himself in his work. Two or three times, Mrs.
Taine saw him glance quickly over his shoulder, as though expecting some
one. Once, for quite a moment, he deliberately turned from his easel to
stand at the window, looking up at the distant mountain peaks. Several
times, he seemed to be listening.

"May I talk?" she said at last.

"Why, certainly," he returned. "I want you to feel perfectly at ease. You
must be altogether at home here. Just let yourself go--say what you like,
with no conventional restraints whatever--consider me a mechanical
something that is no more than an article of furniture--be as thoroughly
yourself as if alone in your own room."

"How funny," she said musingly.

"Not at all"--he returned--"just a matter of bus