forward the ceiling canvas--"

O'Hara glanced up carelessly at the swathed and motionless figure above,
then calmly spat upon his hands and laid hold of one side of the huge
canvas indicated. The painter took the other side.

"Now, O'Hara, careful! Back off a little!--don't let it sway!
There--that's where I want it. Get a ladder and clamp the tops. Pitch it
a little forward--more!--stop! Fix those pully ropes; I'll make things
snug below."

[Illustration: "'Now, Miss West,' he said decisively."]

For ten minutes they worked deftly, rapidly, making fast the great blank
canvas which had been squared and set with an enormous oval in heavy
outline.

From her lofty eyrie she looked down at them as in a dream while they
shifted other enormous framed canvases and settled the oval one into
place. Everything below seemed to be on rubber wheels or casters,
easels, stepladders, colour cabinets, even the great base where the oval
set canvas rested.

She looked up at the blue sky. Sparrows dropped out of the brilliant
void into unseen canons far below from whence came the softened roar of
traffic. Northward the city spread away between its rivers, glittering
under the early April sun; the Park lay like a grey and green map set
with, the irregular silver of water; beyond, the huge unfinished
cathedral loomed dark against the big white hospital of St. Luke;
farther still a lilac-tinted haze hung along the edges of the Bronx.

"All right, O'Hara. Much obliged. I won't need you again."

"Very good, Sorr."

The short, broad Irishman went out with another incurious glance aloft,
and closed the outer door.

High up on her perch she watched the man below. He calmly removed coat
and waistcoat, pulled a painter's linen blouse over his curly head,
lighted a cigarette, picked up his palette, fastened a tin cup to the
edge, filled it from a bottle, took a handful of brushes and a bunch of
cheese cloth, and began to climb up a stepladder opposite her, lugging
his sketch in the other hand.

He fastened the little sketch to an upright and stood on the ladder
halfway up, one leg higher than the other.

"Now, Miss West," he said decisively.

At the sound of his voice fear again leaped through her like a flame,
burning her face as she let slip the white wool robe.

"All right," he said. "Don't move while I'm drawing unless you have to."

She could see him working. He seemed to be drawing with a brush,
rapidly, and with, a kind of a