That night, behind the warm light in the window of his snug den, the Gutter Parson had company, and entertained Special Johnny.

'I'll play yer buttons!' said his small guest, when they had cleared the supper.

bleedin' thumb twice? Now say yer did n't, ye swindlin' liar!'

This is the most quarrelsome and wrangling game that the Gutter-babies play, and they fight bitterly over it, but no one but the Gutter Parson would lick his finger more than once in

"That's a two-er, and that's a threeer, and this 'ere's a tenner!' he said, laying it down with due respect, and watching it with loving eyes.

The game continued with furious excitement and deadly seriousness. Suddenly there was a fierce exclamation from Johnny, and a small fist surprised the Gutter Parson's left eyebrow.

'Oo-er! yer bloody cheat!' said Johnny. 'What, did n't yer lick yer

when Johnny stood on the door-step, with red cheeks, and twisting his cap in his hands, he said,

'It were little Johnny spoiled that show this mornin'.'

Nobody else would have thought it quite in proportion to play buttons all the evening with a juvenile lunatic for the purpose of obtaining this minute

and obvious information.

But herein lay at once the foolishness and the genius of our Gutter Parson.

THE Model knew the tricks of the trade; so when she noticed that the painter's gaze had settled itself at the level of the flounce on her petticoat, she straightened her back, raised her bare arms, and indulged in a long, slow stretch and a yawn that made her eyes water. There was no hurry. He'd be working away down there on the lower part of his canvas for some time.

In the corner, behind Burton, was a big mirror, and if she had craned her neck just a little, she might, without interfering with him, have seen the deliberate, infallible brush strokes that were the envy and the despair of so many of his colleagues. For you might

VOL. 110 - NO. 1

quarrel with Burton's ideas,— or what some people considered his lack of them, or with the palette he sometimes worked in; but there were no two words about his painting.

The Model did n't look. If any one had asked her,—which no one did,— she might have discoursed feelingly on the folly of painting a picture of a girl washing her hands in a common white porcelain wash-bowl that stood on an imitation mahogany wash-stand, with a cheap porcelain pitcher beside it, and the slop-jar, which completed the set, glaring, without apology, in the foreground. Also, she might have had a word to say of the absurdity of hang

guess those foreign counts are a pretty bum lot, even the best of them. She certainly drew down a lemon all right.'

Burton had caught up a brush and was making an imperceptible change in the color of one of the shadows on the face.

'We'll finish this to-morrow,' he said, cheerfully ignoring the topic she had chosen. He fell back for another look and regarded his work with undisguised satisfaction. 'So you don't think much of this, eh?'

'Oh, I suppose it's all right,' said the Model, 'only, well, I should think you'd paint something pretty.'

'Like this?' he questioned. He He walked swiftly across the studio to where another easel stood, its canvas turned toward the wall. He wheeled it round and pushed it toward the light.

He heard a little gasp of wonder from the Model. Then came a silence more eloquent than words.

'My!' breathed the Model at the end of it. 'My, but ain't that swell?' She turned on Burton with sudden vehemence. 'Who did it?' she demanded. He answered with an ironical little bow.

'You!' she cried.

'What's worse,' he assented, 'I'm going to sign it.'

'Well, why in the world, if you can do things like that, do you?'

The Model let the sentence trail away as her look reverted to the picture she had been posing for.

'I don't know,' said Burton thoughtfully. I ask myself that question every day. I suppose it's an attempt to demonstrate that it's possible to serve both God and Mammon.'

He plunged his hands in his pockets and began to move restlessly back and forth across the room.

The girl paid no more attention to him than to the answer he had given

her, which she had not understood. She was gazing with round eyes and open mouth at the portrait.

'Did she really have those furs?' she asked at last. 'Or did you just make them up?'

'Yes, she had the furs and she had the necklace. I've painted them pretty well, have n't I? That necklace, now, - a jeweler could almost identify the pearls.'

The cutting edge of irony in his voice was lost on the girl.

'I should think he could,' she wondered.

Burton's restless pace grew quicker. He was struggling with an overmastering desire to tell the truth for once. The clear absurdity of the impulse made it all the harder to resist. After all, where could he find a safer depository than in the uncomprehending ears of the girl who stood gaping there. He stopped short and faced her.

'I'm going to tell you a secret,' he said.

The girl looked round at him, puzzled, a little uneasy. It was n't a bit like Burton to get fresh with his models. She'd posed for him long enough to find that out. He never had much to say, and his one concern at the end of a sitting seemed always to be to get rid of her as early as possible. He was looking straight at her, but with an abstracted gaze that saw nothing.

"That picture over there, the one you're posing for, is a piece of really honest work. But it's more than that. It's really beautiful. Oh, there's no doubt about it. I know it. And there'll always be a small class of people in the world who'll know it. Perhaps after they've said so often enough, the others may come to agree with them. because they see it themselves, but because they'll believe what they've been told. It may be that some mil

Not

lionaire of the twenty-second century, if there are any millionaires then, will buy it for a quarter of a million dollars; and then people will stand in front of it in the gallery and look solemn, and check it in their catalogues to convince themselves that they've really seen it. Whether that happens or not, -— and and I'll be too dead to care before it does, no amount of silly praise nor ignorant neglect, nor change of the fashion of the day, can make one grain of difference to that picture. It'll always be there, and there'll always be a few that know. In their hearts, the rest will always agree with you.'

The Model had been placidly occupied stroking out the wrinkles in the petticoat about her hips, but she straightened up with a little start on the 'you,' and looked at him in vague embarrassment. She wished he'd stop talking and let her go home.

Burton strode over to the other easel and dragged it out farther into the light.

'Now just look at this thing,' he commanded. 'Oh, yes, I've used lots of pretty pink and white paint, and I've painted a pretty pink and white face, and the rest to match. And as you say, the furs are expensive and the pearls are real. But look at it. What is her weight resting on? Nothing. Where's her back-bone? Nowhere. She has n't any. Where's her right leg? There was n't room for it, if she was to taper down like that. Look at the size of that foot! She could n't stand on it. See how bright her eyes are. That's because they are n't in the plane of her face, really, but way out in front of it. They ought to be strung on two strings like beads, to keep them from falling. In four words, the thing is plausibly and consistently and infernally rotten.'

He stepped back from it with a grim laugh. He had forgotten the very ex

istence of the girl beside him. On her part, she was wondering whether she'd come back to-morrow or not. Oh, she supposed he was all right, really. Only she wished he'd shut up and let her go.

'Of course, in its own way it's good,' he went on. 'It has to be. You have to know how to draw to do a thing as bad as that and get away with it. But the further you can go, without giving yourself away, the better they like it. I guess in that direction, this thing's about my limit.'

He turned away and strode off on his old patrol across the room.

The girl edged tentatively in the direction of the stairs up to the loft where her clothes were. But he stopped her with a gesture.

'Why do I go on with it?' he demanded. "That's the question. It is n't because I need the money. Lord! I'm rolling in it, from the dozens and scores of these things I've done before. Why don't I turn honest, now I've grown rich? Well, I like to be the fashion. I suppose that's the answer one answer anyway. As long as these idiots are waiting three or four ahead all the time for stuff like this, I go on turning it out. And they like it. Bless you! They eat it up. There's a sort of pleasure, I suppose, in seeing how far I can go without giving myself away. Oh, they don't deserve anything better, I know. I tried it once with one of the best of them—'

He broke off with a little laugh, and, oddly enough, his gaze swung round to the picture of Kirby that stood out on the floor at an angle from the wall.

'Her father was a real man, and I'd an idea that she was a real girl; that there was something inside her clothes and behind her face.'

The girl was looking at him now with an expression of genuine interest, and her look stopped Burton as suddenly

as a dash of cold water in his face. She scented a romance!

'All right,' he said shortly. 'I'm through for the day. Run along and dress.'

Five minutes later he was able to watch her go, with a smile of pure amusement at his own expense. He was enough of a philosopher for that. He realized quite well that everybody, once in a while, had to turn loose and make a blithering fool of himself. He could hardly have chosen a better witness for his outbreak than the Model. She would account for the whole thing with the comfortable adjective'nutty,' and let it go at that. And, after all, she would probably be nearer right than any of his friends.

Suppose, just suppose, the outbreak had come a little later, before the visitor he was expecting now any minute. Burton straightened up with a grin, turned his picture of the girl at the wash-stand to the wall, and was in the act of turning the portrait of the girl with the necklace, when he checked his hand and left the thing where it was. What's more, he lied to himself about his reason for doing it.

He said the reason was that it would save explanations, avoid false pretenses, and so on. The real reason was that he hoped that when the girl who used to be Ethel Kirby looked at the portrait of this other young girl with the necklace, she would ask a question and give him a chance to answer it. Then, to show himself how little the visit meant to him, he began setting his palette to rights and cleaning up his brushes. Because, of course, it was altogether likely that she would not

come.

It was not until he heard a ring at the bell that he wondered how he should address her. Countess? That would seem like rubbing it in. Oh, well, it was n't really necessary to call people

anything, if one used a little manage

ment.

Perhaps that was what made his greeting rather warmer than he had meant it to be.

'Oh, how do you do?' he cried, when his opening door revealed her. 'I was afraid you would n't come, after all.' 'I'm not interrupting then by being too early?'

It was hard even for his trained eyes to see just where she had changed. She was little, if any, thinner. Certainly there were no wrinkles. Even the bloom on her skin was still there. There was a little more definition to her features perhaps more of what he was in the habit of calling edge. But it was not so much the features themselves after all, as the expressions that played across them. Her smile, that was different. It had come almost instantly with her recognition of him. Certainly before his word of greeting was half spoken. Her old smile used to break through so slowly, unevenly, as if against a shy, reluctant resistance.

ah,

All that went through his head in just the second it took to shut the door after her.

'Oh, you're safely after hours,' he assured her. 'Let me take your coat. It had to be warm here for the model. Yes, she's gone home.'

'Dad said he thought you would n't mind if I ran in for a look. He's awfully proud of it. But I really think he keeps you painting portraits of him just for the fun of watching you work. He says he's never met more than half a dozen men who really knew their business, and you're one of them.'

Burton was a pretty good stage manager. She did not see the portrait until he had released her from her coat. Then, as she turned, her eye fell on it.

"There he is,' said Burton.

She nodded and did not speak immediately.