ping coming my way."

"An ordinary every-day angel face wouldn't do?" her guest insinuated. "I
could go out and fall."

"I don't doubt it!" she returned somewhat crisply. "I feel very sure
that you could disgrace yourself without trouble and even with relish.
But it wouldn't show in your face. You see, you couldn't really
be wicked."

"Couldn't I though!" exclaimed the young man. "A lot you know about it.
I could eat you up for one thing without turning a hair, and that would
be wicked."

"It wouldn't," Barbara laughed. "It would be greedy. My new model has
the face of a man who has never stopped at anything that has stood in
his way. I fancy that he has murders up his sleeve and every other crime
in the calendar. And sometimes memory of them brings the most wonderful
look of sorrow and remorse into his face, and at the same time he looks
resolved to go on murdering and burning and sinning because he can't get
back to where he was when he began to fall, and must go on falling or
perish. Don't you think that if I can cram that into a lump of clay I'll
make a reputation for myself?"

"I think," said Wilmot, "that if you've got that kind of a man sitting
for you, you'll need all the reputation you can get. You talk of him
with the same sort of enthusiasm that a bird would show in describing
being fascinated by a snake."

Barbara considered this judicially. "Do you know," she agreed, "it is
rather like that. He fascinates me, and at the same time I never saw a
brute I hated so. He must be wicked to deserve such pain."

"Oh, he suffers, does he?"

"Of course. Wouldn't you suffer every minute of your life if you had no
legs?"

Barbara, intent upon what was on her plate, did not perceive the sudden
astonished darkening of Wilmot Allen's face, nor that the interest which
he had hitherto only feigned in her new model had become genuine.

"What is he?"

"I was going to say 'just a beggar,'" said Barbara. "But he isn't just
a beggar. I've gathered that he's rather well off, and that he's one of
the powers on the East Side. And he looks money and power, even if he
doesn't talk them."

"Is his name by any chance Blizzard?"

She looked up in astonishment "How did you know?"

"Oh," he said cheerfully, "I've knocked about the city and known all
sorts of curious people, and heard about others. So Blizzard's your new
model. Now look here, Barbara, are we old friends, or aren't we?"

"Very old friends," she said.

"T