d the artist, and we posed her, and the
photograph is simply perfect of her face, and neck too, but when Alice
saw it she blushed furiously and forbade my having them finished.
Afterwards, though, she yielded when her aunt Kate and I begged so hard
and promised that none should be given away, and so just half a dozen
were finished. Indeed, the dress is by no means as _decollete_ as many
girls wear theirs at dinner now in New York; but poor Alice was
scandalized when she saw it last month, and she never would let me put
one in the album."

"Oh, _do_ go and get it, Mrs. Maynard!" pleaded the ladies. "Oh,
_please_ let me see it, Mrs. Maynard!" added Sloat; and at last the
mother-pride prevailed. Mrs. Maynard rustled up-stairs, and presently
returned holding in her hands a delicate silver frame in filigree-work,
a quaint foreign affair, and enclosed therein was a cabinet photograph
_en vignette_,--the head, neck, and shoulders of a beautiful girl; and
the dainty, diminutive, what-there-was-of-it waist of the old-fashioned
gown, sashed almost immediately under the exquisite bust, revealed quite
materially the cause of Alice Renwick's blushes. But a more beautiful
portrait was never photographed. The women fairly gasped with delight
and envy. Sloat could not restrain his impatience to get it in his own
hands, and finally he grasped it and then eyed it in rapture. It was two
minutes before he spoke a word, while the colonel sat laughing at his
worshipping gaze. Mrs. Maynard somewhat uneasily stretched forth her
hand, and the other ladies impatiently strove to regain possession.

"Come, Major Sloat, you've surely had it long enough. _We_ want it
again."

"Never!" said Sloat, with melodramatic intensity. "Never! This is my
ideal of perfection,--of divinity in woman. I will bear it home with me,
set it above my fireside, and adore it day and night."

"Nonsense, Major Sloat!" said Mrs. Maynard, laughing, yet far from being
at her ease. "Come, I _must_ take it back. Alice may be in any minute
now, and if she knew I had betrayed her she would never forgive me.
Come, surrender!" And she strove to take it from him.

But Sloat was in one of his utterly asinine moods. He would have been
perfectly willing to give any sum he possessed for so perfect a picture
as this. He never dreamed that there were good and sufficient reasons
why _no_ man should have it. He so loved and honored his colonel that he
was ready to lay down his life for