her eye, laughed, and went on with his work.

"The critics were savage," he said. "Lord! It hurts, too. But I've
simply got to be busy. What good would it do me to sit down and draw
casts with a thin, needle-pointed stick of hard charcoal. Not that they
say I can't draw. They admit that I can. They admit that I can paint,
too."

He laughed, stretched his arms:

"Draw! A blank canvas sets me mad. When I look at one I feel like
covering it with a thousand figures twisted into every intricacy and
difficulty of foreshortening! I wish I were like that Hindu god with a
dozen arms; and even then I couldn't paint fast enough to satisfy what
my eyes and brain have already evoked upon an untouched canvas.... It's
a sort of intoxication that gets hold of me; I'm perfectly cool, too,
which seems a paradox but isn't. And all the while, inside me, is a
constant, hushed kind of laughter, bubbling, which accompanies every
brush stroke with an 'I told you so!'--if you know what I'm trying to
say--_do_ you?"

"N-not exactly. But I suppose you mean that you are self-confident."

"Lord! Listen to this girl say in a dozen words what I'm trying to say
in a volume so that it won't scare me! Yes! That's it. I am confident.
And it's that self-confidence which sometimes scares me half to death."

From his ladder he pointed with his brush to the preliminary sketch
that faced her, touching figure after figure:

"I'm going to draw them in, now," he said; "first this one. Can you
catch the pose? It's going to be hard; I'll block up your heels, later;
that's it! Stand up straight, stretch as though the next moment you were
going to rise on tiptoe and float upward without an effort--"

He was working like lightning in long, beautiful, clean outline strokes,
brushed here and there with shadow shapes and masses. And time flew at
first, then went slowly, more slowly, until it dragged at her delicate
body and set every nerve aching.

"I--may I rest a moment?"

"Sure thing!" he said, cordially, laying aside palette and brushes.
"Come on, Miss West, and we'll have luncheon."

She hastily swathed herself in the wool robe.

"Do you mean--here?"

"Yes. There's a dumb-waiter. I'll ring for the card."

"I'd like to," she said, "but do you think I had better?"

"Why not?"

"You mean--take lunch with you?"

"Why not?"

"Is it customary?"

"No, it isn't."

"Then I think I will go out to lunch somewhere--"

"I'm not going to let you get