" as the Responsible Editor had talked about the job.

"And they want me to contribute a series of articles on the new art
centres in the United States: Denver in Art, Pittsburgh in Art,
Milwaukee in Art--that sort of rot," he scoffed.

Milly saw nothing contemptible in this; all the magazines did the same
thing in one subject or another to arouse local enthusiasm for
themselves.

"You write so easily," she suggested, by way of encouragement,
remembering the newspaper paragraphs he used to contribute to the
_Star_.

"But I want to paint!" Bragdon growled, and dropped the subject.

In the intervals of pot boiling he had been working on several canvases
that he hoped to exhibit in the spring. Milly had lost confidence in
painting since she had come to New York and had heard about the lives of
young painters. Even if Jack could finish his pictures in time for the
exhibition, they might not be accepted, and if they were, would probably
be hung in some obscure corner of the crowded galleries for several
weeks, with a lot of other "good-enough" canvases, only to be returned
to the artist--a dead loss, the fate of most pictures, she had learned.

So Milly was for the Art Editorship. She took counsel with Big Brother,
who happened to call, and B. B., who regarded Milly as a sensible woman,
the right sort for an impracticable artist to have married, said: "Jack
would be crazy to let such a chance slip by him. I know Bunker--he's all
right." So when he saw Jack next, he went at him boisterously on the
subject, but the artist cut him short by remarking quietly,--"I've told
them I'd take it--the thing's settled."

When Milly heard this, she felt a little reaction. Would Marion Reddon
have done the same with Sam? But she put her doubts aside easily. "It'll
be a good start. Jack is still young, and he will have plenty of time to
paint--if he has it in him" (a reservation she would not have made two
years before), "and it will do him good to know more people."

Milly would like herself to know more people in this great city, which
was just beginning to interest her, and she was not at all inclined to
immure herself in a suburb or the depths of the country with a husband
who, after all, had not fully satisfied her heart. To know people, to
have a wide circle of acquaintance, seemed to her, as it did to most
people, of the highest importance, not merely for pleasure but for
business as well. How otherwise was one to get on in th