while to
"blow the rest in" on a sister-in-law who seemed to have no taste for
matrimony. Moreover, he really liked and admired her, and he liked still
more to spend money. When his pockets were full of actual coin he
abandoned himself to sheer happiness. Debt had bred philosophy;
moreover, his wife relieved him of too depressing a contact with duns,
and there were times when his respite was longer than he deserved. If
his Paula had a little way of cajoling the amount out of her sister's
pocket, why not? He had never refused a friend in need, and, in truth,
could see no use for money except to spend it. If all the world did not
wag his way, so much the worse for cold-blooded mercenary superfluous
beings. So, the two weeks had been a round of dinners at the gay
Bohemian restaurants, chafing-dish suppers at his own and other studios,
the theatre and opera, and long walks about the brilliant streets at
night. It was all the more interesting to Isabel from its odd wild
likeness to foreign life. She had heard much of this American
"continental" flavor of San Francisco life, only to be tasted by
artificial light, and she had given herself up to it with an abandon of
which she possessed a sufficient reserve. But one cloud had risen on the
blue, and as it emptied itself in a torrent, it was a matter for
congratulation that it had tarried the fortnight.

A woman of growing wealth, who affected artists' society, had continued
to live in her pretty odd little house, but had recently done it up like
a stuffed and scented jeweller's box. The tiny salon was her pride. It
was all cherry satin and white lace, the furniture lilliputian, to match
the proportions of the room and the lady. She was large-eyed,
dark-haired, pretty, and the room set her off admirably. It was here
that she invariably received her artist friends, and felt herself at
last set in a definite niche, in the city of individualities. One day,
in a spasm of generosity, she bade Stone, calling in a mood of unusual
depression, to paint it, and sell for his own benefit what, at least,
should be a glowing bit of still life. Stone began his work next day,
meaning, when the seductive interior was finished, to induce his patron
to sit on the doll-like sofa for a portrait, irresistible alike to her
vanity and pocket. But she capriciously went off to New York for
clothes, and he exhibited the picture in the shop of a dealer where
buyers were not infrequent. Thence, indeed, in