e seen the Boot Show."

"Extremely frivolous," Janet commented.

"Ah, now we are condemned!" Elfrida answered, and for an
instant it almost seemed as if it were so.

"Daddy wants you to go and paint straggling gray stone
villages in Scotland now--straggling, climbing gray stone
villages with only a bit of blue at the end of the 'Dead
Wynd' where it turns into the churchyard gate."

"How charming!" Elfrida exclaimed.

"I suppose he has been saturating himself with Barrie,"
Kendal said. "If I could reproduce Barrie on canvas, I'd
go, like a shot. By the way, Miss Bell, there's somebody
you are, interested in--do you see a middle-aged man,
rather bald, thick-set, coming this way?--George Jasper."

"Really!" Elfrida exclaimed, jumping to her feet "Oh,
_thank_ you! The most consummate artist in human nature
that the time has given!" she added, with intensity.
"There can be no question. Oh, I am so happy to have seen
him!"

"I'm not altogether sure," Kendal began, and then he
stopped, looking at Janet in astonished question. Elfrida
had taken half a dozen steps into the middle of the room,
steps so instinct with effect that already as many heads
were turned to look at her. Her eyes were large with
excitement, her cheeks flushed, and she bent her head a
little, almost as if to see nothing that might dissuade
her from her purpose. The author of "The Alien," "A
Moral Catastrophe," "Her Disciple," and a number of other
volumes which cause envy and heart-burnings among
publishers, in the course of his somewhat short-sighted
progress across the room, paused with a confused effort
to remember who this pretty girl might be who wanted to
speak to him.

Elfrida said, "Pardon me!" and Mr. Jasper instantly
perceived that there could be no question of that, with
her face. She was holding out her hand, and he took it
with absolute mystification. Elfrida had turned very
pale, and a dozen people were listening. "Give me the
right to say I have done this!" she said, looking at him
with shy bravery in her beautiful eyes. She half sank on
one knee and lifted the hand that wrote "A Moral
Catastrophe" to her lips.

Mr. Jasper repossessed himself of it rather too hastily
for dignity, and inwardly he expressed his, feelings by
a puzzled oath. Outwardly he looked somewhat ashamed of
having inspired this unknown young lady's enthusiasm,
but he did his confused best, on the spur of the moment,
to carry off the situation as one of th