she never realised before she sang it to-night how
hollow New York was. She said it suddenly came over her. She says she's
going to give up her career and go back to her mother. What the deuce
are you twiddling your fingers for?" he broke off, irritably.

"Sorry, old man. I was just counting."

"Counting? Counting what?"

"Birds, old thing. Only birds!" said Archie.

CHAPTER XXV. THE WIGMORE VENUS

The morning was so brilliantly fine; the populace popped to and fro
in so active and cheery a manner; and everybody appeared to be so
absolutely in the pink, that a casual observer of the city of New York
would have said that it was one of those happy days. Yet Archie Moffam,
as he turned out of the sun-bathed street into the ramshackle building
on the third floor of which was the studio belonging to his artist
friend, James B. Wheeler, was faintly oppressed with a sort of a kind
of feeling that something was wrong. He would not have gone so far as to
say that he had the pip--it was more a vague sense of discomfort. And,
searching for first causes as he made his way upstairs, he came to the
conclusion that the person responsible for this nebulous depression was
his wife, Lucille. It seemed to Archie that at breakfast that morning
Lucille's manner had been subtly rummy. Nothing you could put your
finger on, still--rummy.

Musing thus, he reached the studio, and found the door open and the room
empty. It had the air of a room whose owner has dashed in to fetch
his golf-clubs and biffed off, after the casual fashion of the artist
temperament, without bothering to close up behind him. And such, indeed,
was the case. The studio had seen the last of J. B. Wheeler for that
day: but Archie, not realising this and feeling that a chat with Mr.
Wheeler, who was a light-hearted bird, was what he needed this morning,
sat down to wait. After a few moments, his gaze, straying over the room,
encountered a handsomely framed picture, and he went across to take a
look at it.

J. B. Wheeler was an artist who made a large annual income as an
illustrator for the magazines, and it was a surprise to Archie to find
that he also went in for this kind of thing. For the picture, dashingly
painted in oils, represented a comfortably plump young woman who, from
her rather weak-minded simper and the fact that she wore absolutely
nothing except a small dove on her left shoulder, was plainly intended
to be the goddess Venus. Archie was not mu