ward and laid the envelope on the table among the tubes of
paint.

"It isn't the letter merely. I thought you wouldn't object to a little
advance on your 'Every Other Week' work till you kind of got started."

Beaton remained inflexible. "It can't be done, Fulkerson. Don't I tell
you I can't sell myself out to a thing I don't believe in? Can't you
understand that?"

"Oh yes; I can understand that first-rate. I don't want to buy you; I
want to borrow you. It's all right. See? Come round when you can; I'd
like to introduce you to old March. That's going to be our address." He
put a card on the table beside the envelope, and Beaton allowed him to go
without making him take the check back. He had remembered his father's
plea; that unnerved him, and he promised himself again to return his
father's poor little check and to work on that picture and give it to
Fulkerson for the check he had left and for his back debts. He resolved
to go to work on the picture at once; he had set his palette for it; but
first he looked at Fulkerson's check. It was for only fifty dollars, and
the canny Scotch blood in Beaton rebelled; he could not let this picture
go for any such money; he felt a little like a man whose generosity has
been trifled with. The conflict of emotions broke him up, and he could
not work.

IV

The day wasted away in Beaton's hands; at half-past four o'clock he went
out to tea at the house of a lady who was At Home that afternoon from
four till seven. By this time Beaton was in possession of one of those
other selves of which we each have several about us, and was again the
laconic, staccato, rather worldlified young artist whose moments of a
controlled utterance and a certain distinction of manner had commended
him to Mrs. Horn's fancy in the summer at St. Barnaby.

Mrs. Horn's rooms were large, and they never seemed very full, though
this perhaps was because people were always so quiet. The ladies, who
outnumbered the men ten to one, as they always do at a New York tea, were
dressed in sympathy with the low tone every one spoke in, and with the
subdued light which gave a crepuscular uncertainty to the few objects,
the dim pictures, the unexcited upholstery, of the rooms. One breathed
free of bric-a-brac there, and the new-comer breathed softly as one does
on going into church after service has begun. This might be a suggestion
from the voiceless behavior of the man-servant who let you in, but it was
also be