had
conquered.

"But she is not the kind of a woman to come to me because she has made
a failure, and, if she were, she would not be worth the winning," he
thought, bitterly, as he lighted his cigar. "A little more of the life
she is leading now, a few more disappointments, and the woman that is
in her, the part of herself which she has crushed back for the past
three years, will be annihilated. I must find some way to rescue it,
to rouse it, and when she has achieved, at least, a semblance of
success, trust to my own good fortune to make her look at things as I
want her to see them."

It was a new proposition to him, and he racked his brain to find a way
out, and by the time he reached his club he was in a mood to resort to
physical violence, if necessary, to make any one of his married
friends promise to deliver up a child for portrait purposes. But the
club was deserted, and he went to bed to spend a wakeful night in
seeking a solution of his problem.

Elizabeth smiled grimly the next day as she was preparing her frugal
luncheon. A bunch of violets, whose value represented a half month's
rent of her tiny studio, was diffusing fragrance through it, and a
basket of fruit, which would last a month, was on the table; but the
necessaries were represented by a pot of tea, a package of biscuits
and a small pat of butter. Even the last was an unwonted extravagance
at midday, but, after the dinner of the night before, she could not
descend too suddenly to dry biscuits, and, after all, Tom's confidence
had given her more courage for the future. She had even tried to work
over the rejected sketches with a certain degree of hopefulness, but
her heart was not in it, and she was gazing at one of them
disconsolately, when there was a sharp knock at the door, and Tom,
disregarding all studio ethics, burst in before she could open it. He
seized both of her hands and whirled her about the room, to the grave
peril of her modest bric-a-brac, his face beaming and his eyes
sparkling with pleasure.

"Betsy, things are coming your way; I've caught one for you," he
almost shouted, and she implored him to be quiet and tell her what he
meant.

"Why, a subject--a victim, or whatever you call people who have their
portraits painted. No end of money and fame undying--but I haven't
time to tell you about it all now. Just let me know when you can
commence, and I will have her here."

"Are you in earnest, Tom?" she asked, incredulously; for