smiled grimly. "I confess I thought of you in that
connection several times."

She eyed him doubtfully. "Oh, well," she said easily, "I suppose artists
must amuse themselves, occasionally--the same as the rest of us."

"I don't think that, '_amuse_' is exactly the word, Mrs. Taine," the other
returned coldly.

"No? Surely you don't meant to tell me that it is anything serious?"

"I don't mean to tell you anything about it," he retorted rather sharply.

She laughed. "You don't need to. Jim has already told me quite enough. Mr.
King, himself, will tell me more."

"Not unless he's a bigger fool than I think," growled the novelist.

Again, she laughed into his face, mockingly. "You men are all more or less
foolish when there's a woman in the case, aren't you?"

To which, the other answered tartly, "If we were not, there would be no
woman in the case."

As Conrad Lagrange spoke, Louise, exhausted by her efforts to achieve that
sunset in the mountains with her limited supply of adjectives, floundered
hopelessly into the expressive silence of clasped hands and heaving breast
and ecstatically upturned eyes. The artist, seizing the opportunity with
the cunning of desperation, turned to Mrs. Taine, with some inane remark
about the summers in California.

Whatever it was that he said, Mrs. Taine agreed with him, heartily,
adding, "And you, I suppose, have been making good use of your time? Or
have you been simply storing up material and energy for this winter?"

This brought Louise out of the depths of that sunset, with a flop. She was
so sure that Mr. King had some inexpressibly wonderful work to show them.
Couldn't they go at once to the equally inexpressibly beautiful studio, to
see the inexpressibly lovely pictures that she was so inexpressibly sure
he had been painting in the inexpressibly grand and beautiful and
wonderfully lovely mountains?

The painter assured them that he had no work for them to see; and Louise
floundered again into the depths of inexpressible disappointment and
despair.

Nevertheless, a few minutes later, Aaron King found himself in his
studio, alone with Mrs. Taine. He could not have told exactly how she
managed it, or why. Perhaps, in sheer pity, she had rescued him from the
floods of Louise's appreciation. Perhaps--she had some other reasons.
There had been something said about her right to see her own picture, and
then--there they were--with the others safely barred from intruding upon