advocated going on to
New York. If by any chance Saxon had come back to the States; if, for
example, he had recovered _en voyage_ and been transferred, as was not
impossible, to a west-bound vessel, his agent in New York might have
some tidings.

Herve cursed himself for his failure to learn, in the confused
half-hour at the Puerto Frio tavern, the name of the vessel that had
taken Saxon on board, or at least the name of the fellow refugee who
had befriended him.

When the ship came abreast of the fanglike skyline of Manhattan
Island, and was shouldered against its pier at Brooklyn by swarming
tugs, the girl, although outwardly calm, was not far from inward
despair.

Steele's first step was the effort to learn what steamer it might have
been that left Puerto Frio for Venezuela and thence for France. But,
in the promiscuous fleets of rusty-hulled tramps that beat their way
about the world, following a system hardly more fixed than the course
of a night-hawk cab about a city's streets, the effort met only
failure.

The girl would not consent to an interval of rest after her
sea-voyage, but insisted on accompanying Steele at once to the
establishment of the art dealer who had the handling of Saxon's
pictures.

The dealer had seen Mr. Saxon some time before as the artist passed
through New York, but since that time had received no word. He had
held a successful exhibition, and had written several letters to the
Kentucky address furnished him, but to none of them had there been a
reply. The dealer was enthusiastic over the art of the painter, and
showed the visitors a number of clippings and reviews that were rather
adulation than criticism.

The girl glanced at them impatiently. The work was great, and she was
proud of its praise, but just now she was feeling that it really meant
nothing at all to her in comparison with the painter himself. To her,
he would have been quite as important, she realized, had no critic
praised him; had his brush never forced a compliment from the world.
Her brow gathered in perplexity over one paragraph that met her eye.

"The most notable piece of work that has yet come from this remarkable
palette," said the critic, "is a canvas entitled, 'Portrait of a
lady.' In this, Mr. Saxon has done something more than approximate the
genius of Frederick Marston. He has seemed to carry it a point
forward, and one is led to believe that such an effort may be the door
through which the artist sha