n--ten thousand a year!"

"Oh, Neil, I've lived on ten thousand a year before, and I never had
half the fun that I had when we were getting along on twelve hundred."

"Yes, but then we were always dreaming of the day when I'd make a lot;
we lived on that hope, didn't we?"

Edith laughed. "You used to say we lived on love."

"You're not serious." He turned to gaze moodily out of the window. And
then she left the azalea, and perched on the flat arm of his chair.

"Dearest," she said, "I am serious. I know all this means to you. We're
human, and we don't like to 'chip at crusts like Hindus,' even for the
sake of youth and art. I never had illusions about love in a cottage and
all that. Only, dear, I have been happy, so very happy, with you,
because--well, because I was living in an atmosphere of honest purpose,
honest ambition, and honest desire to do some good thing in the world. I
had never known such an atmosphere before. At home, you know, father and
Uncle James and the boys--well, it was all money, money, money with
them, and they couldn't understand why I--"

"Could marry a poor newspaper artist? That's just the point."

She put her hand to his lips.

"Now, dear! If they couldn't understand, so much the worse for them. If
they thought it meant sacrifice to me, they were mistaken. I have been
happy in this little flat; only--" she leaned back and inclined her head
with her eyes asquint--"only the paper in this room is atrocious; it's a
typical landlord's selection--McGaw picked it out. You see what it means
to be merely rich."

She was so pretty thus that he kissed her, and then she went on:

"And so, dear, if I didn't seem to be as impressed and delighted as you
hoped to find me, it is because I was thinking of Mr. Hardy and the
poor, dear common little _Post_, and then--of Mr. Clayton. Did you think
of him?"

"Yes."

"You'll have to--to cartoon him?"

"I suppose so."

The fact he had not allowed himself to face was close to both of them,
and the subject was dropped until, just as he was going down-town--this
time to break the news to Hardy--he went into the room he sarcastically
said he might begin to call his studio, now that he was getting ten
thousand a year, to look for a sketch he had promised Nolan for the
sporting page. And there on his drawing-board was an unfinished cartoon,
a drawing of the strong face of John Clayton. He had begun it a few days
before to use on the occasion of Clayton's r