ou'd do something
exquisite."

Bertha looked at it in silence. It was as lovely in color as a flower, a
dream-girl, not Bertha Haney. And at last she said: "It's fine, but it
isn't me."

Humiston broke forth almost violently. "Of course it isn't you; it's the
way you look to me. I never paint people as they look to themselves nor
to their friends. I am painting my impression of you."

"Do you really see me like that?" she both asked and exclaimed. And at
the moment she was more moving than she had ever been before, and
Humiston, in a voice of anguish, cried:

"My God, why didn't I do her like that?" And he fell to coughing so
violently that Bertha shuddered.

Moss defended himself. "I couldn't do her in _all_ her fine poses," he
complained. "I had to select. Why didn't you do her that way yourself?"

The painter put his short-hand sketch away with a sigh. "If you venture
as far as New York, I hope you and the Captain will visit my studio," he
said.

With no suspicion of being passed from hand to hand, she promised to
send him her address, and said: "I'd like to see the pictures you have
here."

Moss became abusive. "Now see here, Jerry, I can't let you take Mrs.
Haney to that show of yours. I'll go myself to point out their weak
points."

"I know their weak points a bloody sight better than you do," answered
Humiston, readily.

"If you do you don't speak of 'em."

"Why should I? You don't call out the defects of your 'hardware,' do
you?"

Mrs. Moss interposed. "That's just what he does do, and it hurts trade.
I think I'll take Mrs. Haney over to see the pictures myself."

Humiston brightened. "Very well; but you must all lunch with me. You're
about the only civilized people I know in this crazy town, and I need
you."

"No," said Bertha. "It's our treat. You all come over and eat with us."

Haney, who had been keeping in the background, now came forward. "I
second that motion," he heartily said. "We don't get a chance every day
to feed a bunch of artists."

"You can have that pleasure any day here," said Moss. "Our noses are
always over the bars, waiting."

When she emerged from the gallery an hour later Bertha enjoyed an
exalted sense of having been carried through some upper, serener world,
where business, politics, and fashion had little place. It was "only a
dip," as Mrs. Moss said--just to show the way; but it set the girl's
brain astir with half-formed, disconnected aspirations. Only as she