enty-six he had become a
portrait-painter of international reputation. Then the French
government purchased one of his paintings at an absurdly small figure,
and placed it in the Luxembourg, from whence it would in time depart to
be buried in the hall of some provincial city; and American
millionaires, and English Lord Mayors, members of Parliament, and
members of the Institute, masters of hounds in pink coats, and
ambassadors in gold lace, and beautiful women of all nationalities and
conditions sat before his easel. And so when he returned to New York
he was welcomed with an enthusiasm which showed that his countrymen had
feared that the artistic atmosphere of the Old World had stolen him
from them forever. He was particularly silent, even at this date,
about his work, and listened to what others had to say of it with much
awe, not unmixed with some amusement, that it should be he who was
capable of producing anything worthy of such praise. We have been told
what the mother duck felt when her ugly duckling turned into a swan,
but we have never considered how much the ugly duckling must have
marvelled also.

"Carlton is probably the only living artist," a brother artist had said
of him, "who fails to appreciate how great his work is." And on this
being repeated to Carlton by a good-natured friend, he had replied
cheerfully, "Well, I'm sorry, but it is certainly better to be the only
one who doesn't appreciate it than to be the only one who does."

He had never understood why such a responsibility had been intrusted to
him. It was, as he expressed it, not at all in his line, and young
girls who sought to sit at the feet of the master found him making love
to them in the most charming manner in the world, as though he were not
entitled to all the rapturous admiration of their very young hearts,
but had to sue for it like any ordinary mortal. Carlton always felt as
though some day some one would surely come along and say: "Look here,
young man, this talent doesn't belong to you; it's mine. What do you
mean by pretending that such an idle good-natured youth as yourself is
entitled to such a gift of genius?" He felt that he was keeping it in
trust, as it were; that it had been changed at birth, and that the
proper guardian would eventually relieve him of his treasure.

Personally Carlton was of the opinion that he should have been born in
the active days of knights-errant--to have had nothing more serious to
do t