ie's
lean neck and the other seized his thin shoulder. "You grandfather of
the devil and all his male progeny, you talk like that and I'll chuck
you through the window!"

Old Jimmie grinned. The grip of the big hands of the painter, though
powerful, was light. They all knew that the loud ravings of the painter
never presaged violence. They had grown to like him, to accept him as
almost one of themselves; though of course they looked down upon him
with amused pity for his imbecility regarding his paintings.

"Get out of here," continued Hunt, "or cut out all this noise that comes
from your having a brain that rattles. I've got to work."

Hunt turned again to his easel, and Old Jimmie, still grinning, lowered
himself into a chair, lit a cigar, and winked at Barney. Hunt, with
brush poised, regarded Maggie a moment.

"You there, Maggie," he ordered, "chin up a bit more, some flash in your
eyes, more pep in your bearing--as though you were asking all the dames
of the Winter Garden, and the Charity Ball, and the Horse Show, and that
gang of tea-swilling women at the Ritzmore you sell cigarettes to--as
though you were asking them all who the dickens they think they are... O
God, can't you do anything!"

"I'm doing the best I can, and I look more like those dames than you
look like a painter!"

"Shut up! I'm paying you a dollar an hour to pose, not to talk back to
me. And you'd have more respect for my money if you knew how hard I had
to work to earn it: carrying a motor car around in each hand. Wash off
that scowl and try to look as I said... There, that's better. Hold it."

He began to paint rapidly, with quick glances back and forth between the
canvas and Maggie. Maggie's dress was just the ordinary shirt-waist and
skirt that the shopgirl and her sisters wear; Hunt had ordered it so.
She was above the medium height, with thick black hair tinted with
shadowy blue, long dark lashes, dark scimitars of eyebrows, a full, firm
mouth, a nose with just the right tilt to it--all effective points for
Hunt in what he wished to do. But what had attracted him most and given
him his idea was her look; hardly pertness, or impudence--rather a
cynical, mature, defiant certainty in herself.

Erect in her cheap shirt-waist, she gazed off into space with a smiling,
confident challenge to all the world. Hunt was trying to make his
picture a true portrait--and also make it a symbol of many things which
still were only taking shape in hi