ether unnecessary as events had proved. There had been no crush of
rude men to assault her. Only an awkward carpenter, a butcher's boy
and the ice man! It was incredible. Of all the men whose restless
feet pressed the pavements of New York, not one, save these three, had
apparently cared whether she lived or died.

The men whom she met in her duties in the schoolroom she had found
utterly devoid of imagination and beneath contempt. They had each
been obviously on guard against the machinations of the female of the
species. They had, each of them, shown plainly their fear and hatred of
women teachers. The feeling was mutual. God knows she had no desire to
encroach on their domain any longer than absolutely necessary.

Perhaps she was making a mistake. The thought was strangling. Only the
girl who waived conventions in the rushing tide of the modern city's
life seemed to live at all. The others merely existed. Jane Anderson
lived! There could be no mistake about that. She had mastered the ugly
mob. Its cruel loneliness was to her a thing unknown. But Jane was an
exception--the one woman in a thousand who could defy conventions and
yet keep her soul and body clean.

The offer she had made had proved a terrible temptation. The artist who
had asked with such eagerness to use her head for his portrait of the
Madonna on the canvas he was executing for the new cathedral, had long
appealed to her vivid imagination. Two prints of his famous work hung on
her walls. She had always wished to know him. He had married a Southern
girl.

That was just the point--he WAS married!

No girl could afford to be shut up alone in a studio with a fascinating
married man for three hours--or half an hour. What if she should fall
in love with him at first sight! Such things had happened. They could
happen again. Only tragedy could be the end of such an event. It was too
dangerous to consider for a moment.

She would have consented had it been possible for Jane to chaperon
her. That would have been obviously ridiculous. No artist with any
self-respect would tolerate such a reflection on his honesty. No girl
could afford to confess her fears in this brazen fashion.

The necessity for her refusal had depressed her beyond any experience
she had passed through in the dreary desert of the past five years.

She lifted the sleeping kitten and whispered passionately:

"Am I a silly fool, Kitty? Am I?"

The tears came at last. She lay back on the