the premises sacred to art.

When there was no longer need to fear the eyes of the world, Mrs. Taine
was at no pains to hide the warmth of her feeling. With little reserve,
she confessed herself in every look and tone and movement.

"Are you really glad to see me, I wonder," she said invitingly. "All this
summer, while I have been forced to endure the company of all sorts of
stupid people, I have been thinking of you and your work. And, you see, I
have come to you, the first possible moment after my return home."

The man--being a man--could not remain wholly insensible to the alluring
physical beauty of the splendid creature who stood so temptingly before
him; but, to the honor of his kind, he could and did remain master of
himself.

The woman, true to her life training,--as James Rutlidge had been true to
his schooling when he approached Sibyl Andres in the mountains,--construed
the artist's manner, not as a splendid self-control but as a careful
policy. To her, and to her kind, the great issues of life are governed,
not at all by principle, but by policy. It is not at all what one is, or
what one may accomplish that matters; it is wholly what one may skillfully
_appear_ to be, and what one may skillfully provoke the world to say,
that is of vital importance. Turning from the painter to the easel, as if
to find in his portrait of her the fuller expression of that which she
believed he dared not yet put into words, she was about to draw aside the
curtain; when Aaron King checked her quickly, with a smile that robbed his
words of any rudeness.

"Please don't touch that, Mrs. Taine. I am not yet ready to show it."

As she turned from the easel to face him, he took her portrait from where
it rested, face to the wall; and placed it upon another easel, saying,
"Here is your picture."

With the painting before her, she talked eagerly of her plans for the
artist's future; how the picture was to be exhibited, and how, because it
was her portrait, it would be praised and talked about by her friends who
were leaders in the art circles. Frankly, she spoke of "pull" and
"influence" and "scheme"; of "working" this and that "paper" for
"write-ups"; of "handling" this or that "critic" and "writer"; of
"reaching the committees"; of introducing the painter into the proper
inside cliques, and clans; and of clever "advertising stunts" that would
make him the most popular portrait painter of his day; insuring thus
his--as she cal