me where I could sit and look at that beautiful portrait,
and not down here at the other end of the room?"

Miss Long, a tall girl with large liquid eyes and a weak red mouth,
languidly murmured a sympathetic assent, and their host smiled
deprecatingly, but with an inward glow of satisfaction; such a remark was
obviously not inspired by the exact truth, but it was nevertheless
pleasant to hear.

"Ah, Miss Heatherton," he replied, "perhaps after all it is better as I
have ordered it. For its little hour the picture should reign with its
sovereignty unquestioned, while if you were near by--" he broke off
meaningly, and Miss Long rewarded his compliment with a bovine glance of
rapture, while Miss Heatherton looked modestly down at the teapot. Even
to an unaesthetic person the arrangement seemed very good indeed, but
rather for the more practical reason that the proximity of food and drink
would very likely have distracted the attention of some of the more
hungry visitors to such a degree that the work of art might have been
comparatively ignored.

The next to arrive were Isabel Hurd and Wilkinson. Wilkinson had not
been invited, but on hearing his cousin say that she was starting for the
studio, he promptly announced that he would accompany her. He knew that
Pelgram disliked him intensely, but he did not feel the slightest
hesitation on that account in accepting the artist's hospitality, and in
fact quite enjoyed the prospect of a dash into the enemy's country. To
be sure, he saw little chance of loot except a trifling modification of
his chronic afternoon hunger; but Isabel's society was desirable, and
Pelgram appealed vividly to his sense of the ludicrous. His reception
was all he could have hoped; his host greeted him with outward
affability, but when he extended his hand from the black velvet cuff with
the handkerchief tucked into it, his face expressed the hidden anguish of
anticipated ridicule to such a degree that Wilkinson felt his visit
already justified.

"It is very good of you to come," said the artist, with a forced smile.
"I had no idea you were interested in art."

"Oh, but I am, though," returned the other, confidently. "I have no idea
what it is, but I'm very much interested in it. And every one says I
have the artistic temperament in the highest degree. By the way, what is
art, anyway? No one ever told me."

Pelgram gave a preliminary cough, and glanced hastily about the room, but
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