head
with a dissenting smile, which carried up the corners of her lips in
maddeningly delicious fashion. Then, the man went on, speaking now
slowly and in measured syllables:

"Some day--when I can tell you my whole story--you will know what
Marston means to me. What little I have done, I have done in stumbling
after him. If I ever attain his perfection, I shall still be as you
say only the copyist--yet, I sometimes think I would rather be the
true copyist of Marston than the originator of any other school."

She sat listening, the toe of one small foot tapping the floor below
the short skirt of her gown, her brow delightfully puckered with
seriousness. A shaft of sun struck the delicate color of her cheeks,
and discovered coppery glints in her brown hair. She was very slim and
wonderful, Saxon thought, and out beyond the vines the summer seemed
to set the world for her, like a stage. The birds with tuneful
delirium provided the orchestration.

"I know just how great he is," she conceded warmly; "I know how
wonderfully he paints. He is a poet with a brush for a pen. But
there's one thing he lacks--and that is a thing you have."

The man raised his brows in challenged astonishment.

"It's the one thing I miss in his pictures, because it's the one thing
I most admire--strength, virility." She was talking more rapidly as
her enthusiasm gathered headway. "A man's pictures are, in a way,
portraits of his nature. He can't paint strong things unless he is
strong himself."

Saxon felt his heart leap. It was something to know that she believed
his canvases reflected a quality of strength inherent to himself.

"You and your master," she went on, "are unlike in everything except
your style. Can you fancy yourself hiding away from the world because
you couldn't face the music of your own fame? That's not modesty--it's
insanity. When I was in Paris, everybody was raving about some new
pictures from his brush, but only his agent knew where he actually
was, or where he had been for years."

"For the man," he acceded, "I have as small respect as you can have,
but for the work I have something like worship! I began trying to
paint, and I was groping--groping rather blindly after something--I
didn't know just what. Then, one day, I stood before his 'Winter
Sunset.' You know the picture?" She nodded assent. "Well, when I saw
it, I wanted to go out to the Metropolitan entrance, and shout Eureka
up and down Fifth Avenue. It told