acquaintance."

The woman caught him up quickly; "To make _her_ acquaintance? Why do you
say, '_her_,' if you do not know who it is?"

The artist was confused. "Did I say, _her_?" he questioned, his face
flushed with embarrassment. "It was a slip of the tongue. Neither Conrad
Lagrange nor I know anything about our neighbor."

She laughed ironically. "And you _could_ know so easily."

"I suppose so; but we have never cared to. We prefer to accept the music
as it comes to us--impersonally--for what it is--not for whoever makes
it." He spoke coldly, as though the subject was distasteful to him, under
the circumstances of the moment.

But the woman persisted. "Well, _I_ know who it is. Shall I tell you?"

"No. I do not care to know. I am not interested in the musician."

"Oh, but you might be, you know," she retorted.

"Please take the pose," returned Aaron King professionally. Mrs. Taine,
wisely, for the time, dropped the subject; contenting herself with a
meaning laugh.

The artist silently gave all his attention to the nearly finished
portrait. He was not painting, now, with full brush and swift sure
strokes,--as had been his way when building up his picture,--but worked
with occasional deft touches here and there; drawing back from the canvas
often, to study it intently, his eyes glancing swiftly from the picture to
the sitter's face and back again to the portrait; then stepping forward
quickly, ready brush in hand; to withdraw an instant later for another
long and searching study. Presently, with an air of relief, he laid aside
his palette and brushes; and turning to Mrs. Taine, with a smile, held out
his hand. "Come," he said, "tell me if I have done well or ill."

"It is finished?" she cried. "I may see it?"

"It is all that I can do"--he answered--"come." He led her to the easel,
where they stood side by side before his work.

The picture, still fresh from the painter's brush, was a portrait of Mrs.
Taine--yet not a portrait. Exquisite in coloring and in its harmony of
tone and line, it betrayed in every careful detail--in every mark of the
brush--the thoughtful, painstaking care--the thorough knowledge and highly
trained skill of an artist who was, at least, master of his own technic.
But--if one might say so--the painting was more a picture than a portrait.
The face upon the canvas was the face of Mrs. Taine, indeed, in that the
features were her features; but it was also the face of a sweetly modest