l myself up short."

"I think you could make me feel personal interest in brickbats or--or
spiders," she said, with a quaint, relaxing smile. "You were born to be
a preacher, not a soldier."

"Do you think so? I've had a notion all along that I was a fairly good
commander and a mighty poor persuader; what I don't intend to be is a
bore." He rose and began to walk slowly round the walls, studying the
paintings under her direction. He was struggling with obscure impulses
to other and more important speech, but after making the circuit of the
room he said, as though rendering a final verdict:

"You have great talent; that is evident. What do you intend to do with
it? It should help some one."

"You are old-fashioned," she replied. "In our modern day, art is content
to add beauty to the world; it does not trouble itself to do good. It is
_un_moral."

"Perhaps I _am_ a preacher, after all, for I like the book or picture
that has a motive, that stands for something. Your conception of art's
uses is French, is it not?"

"I suppose it is; clearly, it isn't Germanic. What would you have me
do--paint Indians to convince the world of their sufferings?"

"Wouldn't that be something like the work Millet did? Seems to me I
remember something of that sort in some book I have read."

She laughed. "Unfortunately, I am not Millet; besides, he isn't the god
of our present idolatry. He's a dead duck. We paint skirt-dancers and
the singers in the cafes now. Toiling peasants are 'out.'"

"You are a woman, and a woman ought--"

"Please don't hand me any of that stupid rot about what a woman _ought_
to be, and isn't. What I am I am, and I don't like dirty, ragged people,
no matter whether they are Roman beggars or Chinese. I like clean,
well-dressed, well-mannered people and no one can make me believe they
are less than a lot of ill-smelling Indians."

"Miss Brisbane, you must not do me an injustice," he earnestly
entreated. "It was not my intention to instruct you to-day. I am
honestly interested in your pictures, and had no thought of renewing an
appeal. I was tempted and fell. If you will forgive me this time, I'll
never preach again."

"I don't say I object to your preachment. I think I rather like it. I
don't think I ever met a man who was so ready to sacrifice his own
interest for an idea. It's rather amusing to meet a soldier who is ready
to knock one down with a moral war-club." She ended with a mocking
inflection of voi