nderful
that she, so lately from the mountains, should be walking here in the
midst of the thronging multitudes of a great city street in the company
of one of the chief artists of the world?

Humiston, crafty, cruel, unscrupulous, returned to his abuse of the
city, and explained to her that American dealers had no real
appreciation of art. "They sell anything that will sell, any cheap daub,
and yet they dared to refuse to exhibit my best things! It was the same
in Pittsburg and Buffalo; they're all alike. But what can you expect of
these densely material towns? Beauty means only prettiness to them."

The salesman of the shop, accustomed to seeing Humiston pass in and out
with friends, paid no special heed to the painter as he led Bertha into
the farther room, where a few of his pictures hung among a dozen others.
No one was in the gallery, and just as she was wondering where the other
paintings could be, he opened a door (which was cut out of the wall and
partly concealed by paintings), and smilingly said: "Here is the inner
temple. Enter."

She obeyed with a little hesitation, for the storeroom was not well
lighted, and she had a wild bird's distrust of dark, enclosing walls.

Humiston shut the door behind him and followed her, plaintively saying:
"Isn't it hard lines to have to bring my friends into this hole to show
my masterpieces?" And by this she inferred that there was nothing
unusual in the experience.

It was a long, bare hall, filled with boxes and littered with bits of
excelsior, and Bertha looked about her uneasily while Humiston bent over
some canvases stacked on the floor. He seemed to be selecting one with
care. An electric lamp was swinging from the ceiling, and under it stood
a large easel, and on this he placed a canvas, and, stepping back with
eyes fixed on her, said with spirit: "This is one of my best. It was in
the new Salon--here is the number. And yet it may not be exhibited in
this rotten town."

Bertha inwardly recoiled from the canvas, for it was a painting of a
nude figure of a girl at the bath. The critics had said, "It is naked,
rather than nude," and the dealers objected to it on this ground, and to
the Western girl it was both shocking and ugly. Before she had caught
her breath he continued, in a tone that was at once a seduction and a
defence: "There is nothing more beautiful in the world than the female
form; it is the flower of flowers. Why should it not be painted?" And
then,