aunted.

"I we-ent out een de wilderness,
En I fell upon--mah--knees,
En I called upon--mah--Savior,
Whut sh-all I do--for--save?
He replied:
_Halleluian!_
Sinnuh, sing!
_Halleluian!_
Ma-ry, Mar-tha, _halle_--
_Hallelu_--
_Halleluian_!"

"Good Lord!" breathed the oldest boy, who was a high-school scholar.

"How weird and primitive!" said the daughter, who was to be a
teacher.

But the father's eyes narrowed, and the hair of his scalp prickled.
'Way back yonder his mother had sung like that, and his heart leaped
to it. If he hadn't been afraid of his educated and modern children,
he would have wept. Emma didn't know that, of course. She kissed the
big cat, placed him carefully on the bed, and lay down beside him in
the attitude of a corpse. She was resigning herself to whatever
should happen.

Peter, upon telephoning his uncle, had been advised to prowl about
until noon, when they were to lunch together. Wherefore he found
himself upon the top of a bus, rolling about New York, seeing that
of which he had read. He didn't see it as Nancy saw it; the city
appeared to him as might some subtle, hard, and fascinatingly plain
woman whose face had flashes of piercing and unforgetable beauty,
beauty unexpected and unlike any other. Unlike the beauty of the
Carolina coast, say, which was a part of his consciousness, there
was here something sinister and splendid.

He got off at the Metropolitan Museum. He wished to see with his own
eyes some of those pictures Claribel Spring had described to him,
among them Fortuny's "Spanish Lady." He stood for a dazzled interval
before her, so disdainful, passionate, provocative, and so
profoundly human. When he moved away, he sighed. He wasn't wondering
if he himself should ever meet and love such a lady; but rather when
he should be able so to portray in a human face all the secrets of
the body and of the soul.

At lunch his uncle, remarking his earnest face, said regretfully:

"Oh, Peter, why couldn't you be content to be a rich man and play
the game according to Hoyle? Art? Of course! You could afford to buy
the best any of 'em could do, instead of trying to sell something
you do yourself. Art is a rich man's recreation. Artists exist in
order that rich men may buy their wares."

"Rich men were invented for the use of poor artists: it's the on