ely. "I fancy I've heard something of that--you're quite new and
radical, aren't you?"

"Oh, we're old," he said gently, "very, very old. We have returned
to Nature--but not the nature of mere academicians. We paint, not
the world of the camera, but the world of the brain. We paint, not
the thing you think you see, but the way you think you see it--its
vibrations of your inner mentality. To paint the apple ripening on
the bough one should reproduce the gentle swelling of the maturing
fruit in your perception.... Now, you see, I am not trying to
reproduce the precise carving of that door; I do not fix the wavings
of that palm. I give you the cerebellic----"

"Quite so," said Miss Falconer, dropping her lorgnette and giving
the canvas the fixity of her unobstructed gaze. "It's most
interesting," she said, a little faintly. "Are there many of you?"

"I don't know," said Billy. "We do not communicate with one another.
That always influences, you know, and it is better to work out
thought alone."

"I should think it would be." Something in her tone suggested that
the inviolated solitude of the asylum suggested itself to her as a
fitting spot. "Well, we won't interrupt you any longer. You've been
most interesting.... The sun is quite hot, isn't it?" and with one
long, lingering look at the picture, a look convinced against its
will, she went her way toward the victoria.

But Lady Claire stood still. Billy had fairly forgotten all about
her, and now as he turned suddenly from the clowning with her
chaperon, he found her gaze being transferred from his picture to
himself. It was a very steady gaze, calm-eyed and deliberate.

"I'm afraid you're making game of us!" she said, in her musical,
high-bred tones, her clear eyes disconcertingly upon him. "Aren't
you?" she gently demanded.

"That's not fair." Billy was uncomfortable and looked away in haste.
He felt a grin coming.

Perhaps he was a shade too late, for Lady Claire laughed suddenly
and with a note of curious delight.

"You're _too_ amusing!" she said. "What made you?... How did you
think of it all?... Are you just beginning?"

"Oh, I began twenty years ago," he smiled back, "but I haven't done
anything in the meantime."

Again she laughed with that ring of mischievous delight. "However
you could think of it all! I shan't tell on you--but she'll _never_
be done wondering." She turned away, her pretty face still bright
with humor, and then she turned back hesi