es
of the others followed him, but Cornelia could not speak. Some of the
pictures she did not like; some she thought were preposterous; but
there were some that she found brilliantly successful, and a few that
charmed her with their delicate and tender poetry. He said something
about most of them, in apology or extenuation; Cornelia believed that
she knew which he liked by his not saying anything of them.

Suddenly he set a large picture on the easel that quite filled the
frame. "Trotting Match at the Pymantoning County Fair," he announced,
and he turned away and began to make tea in a little battered copper
kettle over a spirit-lamp, on a table strewn with color-tubes in the
corner.

"Ah, yes," said Mrs. Westley. "I remember this at the American Artists;
three or four years ago, wasn't it? But you've done something to it,
haven't you?"

"Improved with age," said Ludlow, with his back toward them, bent above
his tea-kettle. "That's all."

"It seems like painting a weed, though," said Charmian. "How can you
care for such subjects?"

Ludlow came up to her with the first cup of tea. "It's no use to paint
lilies, you know."

"Do you call that an answer?"

"A poor one."

He brought Mrs. Westley some tea, and then he came to Cornelia with a
cup in each hand, one for her, and one for himself, and frankly put
himself between her and the others. "Well, what do you think of it?" he
asked, as if there were no one else but they two.

She felt a warm flush of pleasure in his boldness. "I don't know. It's
like it; that's the way I've always seen it; and it's beautiful. But
somehow----"

"What?"

"It looks as if it were somewhere else."

"You've hit it," said Ludlow. "It serves me right. You see I was so
anxious to prove that an American subject was just as susceptible of
impressionistic treatment as a French one, that I made this look as
French as I could. I must do it again and more modestly; not be so
patronizing. I should like to come out there next fall again, and see
another trotting-match. I suppose they'll have one?"

"They always have them; it wouldn't be the Fair without them," said
Cornelia.

"Well, I must come, and somehow do it on the spot; that's the only
way." He pulled himself more directly in front of her and ignored the
others, who talked about his picture with faded interest to each other,
and then went about, and looked at the objects in the studio. "I don't
think I made myself quite clear the