ce that was like a rich
unguent, "we'll try again. We'll just play around that spot. Look into
my eyes. Not _at_ my eyes, my dear woman, _into_ them! Just a little
more challenge--a little more! That's it. Don't wink, for the land's
sake! Now."

He seized a bulb at the end of a tube and slowly squeezed--squeezed
it tragically and remorselessly, twisting himself as if suffering in
sympathy with the bulb, and then in a wide, sweeping gesture he flung
the bulb on to the top of the camera and ejaculated:

"Ha!"

Edward Henry thought:

"I would give ten pounds to see Rentoul Smiles photograph Sir John
Pilgrim." But the next instant the forgotten sensation of hurry was
upon him once more. Quick, quick, Rentoul Smiles! Edward Henry's
scorching desire was to get done and leave New York.

"Now, Miss Isabel," Mr. Smiles proceeded, exasperatingly deliberate,
"d'you know, I feel kind of guilty? I have got a little farm out in
Westchester County and I'm making a little English pathway up the
garden with a gate at the end. I woke up this morning and began to
think about the quaint English form of that gate, and just how I would
have it." He raised a finger. "But I ought to have been thinking
about you. I ought to have been saying to myself, 'To-day I have to
photograph Isabel Joy,' and trying to understand in meditation the
secrets of your personality. I'm sorry! Now, don't talk. Keep like
that. Move your head round. Go on! Go on! Move it. Don't be afraid.
This place belongs to you. It's yours. Whatever you do, we've got
people here who'll straighten up after you.... D'you know why I've
made money? I've made money so that I can take _you_ this afternoon,
and tell a two-hundred-dollar client to go to the deuce. That's
why I've made money. Put your back against the chair, like an
Englishwoman. That's it. No, don't _talk_, I tell you. Now look
joyful, hang it! Look joyful.... No, no! Joy isn't a contortion. It's
something right deep down. There, there!"

The lubricant voice rolled on while Rentoul Smiles manipulated the
camera. He clasped the bulb again and again threw it dramatically
away.

"I'm through!" he said. "Don't expect anything very grand,
Miss Isabel. What I've been trying to do this afternoon is my
interpretation of you as I've studied your personality in your
speeches. If I believed wholly in your cause, or if I wholly
disbelieved in it, my work would not have been good. Any value that
it has will be due to the s