for the diminutive
portrait of himself, the man had left behind!

As usual, in the presence of a woman's tears, I was mute and incapable
of giving comfort. I feared to utter some of the platitudes which cause
the sorrowing to revolt against the futility of wordy consolation.
Frieda's kindly touch was worth more than all I could have said in a
dog's age. Soon, the streaming eyes had been dabbed again to dryness,
but the smile I had hoped for did not return.

"I--I am sorry I was so weak," said Frances, and ran away to her room,
possibly for the powder surely invented by a great benefactor of
humanity, since it may serve to obliterate the traces of women's tears
and enables them to look at you again, hopefully and with courage
renewed.

* * * * *

After this, three weeks went by. The literary agent upon whose kindly
head I pour my short stories announced the sale of my virtuous dog's
tale, on the strength of which I took Frieda and Frances to a
moving-picture theatre, one Saturday night. The latter's posing for
Gordon was always a subject of conversation. The picture, it appeared,
was now quite finished, and we were moving heaven and earth in our
endeavors to find something wherewith a woman with a young baby might
earn a few dollars. Frances spoke little of her experiences at the
studio, except to gratify our curiosity. It was always the same thing.
Baby was generally ever so good and Mr. McGrath fairly patient with his
occasional relapses from slumbering silence. An impression made its way
in my mind to the effect that Gordon rather awed his model. She had
watched the picture's growth and this process of creation, utterly new
to her, seemed to fill her with some sort of amazement.

"Tell me just what it is like," I asked her, as we sat on the stoop,
waiting for Frieda to turn up.

"I suppose it looks like me," she said, doubtfully, "but then, it isn't
a portrait, of course. I--I don't think I look just like that. Sometimes
he stands in front of me for the longest time and glares, looking more
and more disappointed, and all at once he says I've got a Sphynx of a
face or a deuce of a mouth, or something just as complimentary. Then he
turns to the picture again and changes something, with merely a touch of
one of those big brushes, and plasters on another dab of paint and moves
off to look at it. After this, he says it's much better, or declares
he's spoiled everything, and he lights h