"What a clever, clever man you are, to think of it! And
what a story it will make for the papers--when my picture is shown--how
you were not satisfied with the portrait and refused to let it go--and
how, after keeping it in your studio for months, you repainted it, to
satisfy your artistic conscience!"

Aaron King smiled.

The announcement in the house that the artist was to repaint Mrs. Taine's
picture, provoked characteristic comment. Louise effervesced a frothy
stream of bubbling exclamations. James Rutlidge gave a hearty, "By Jove,
old man, you have nerve! If you can really improve on that canvas, you are
a wonder." And Mr. Taine, under the watchful eye of his beautiful wife,
responded with a husky whisper, "Quite right--my boy--quite right!
Certainly--by all means--if you feel that way about it--" his consent and
approval ending in a paroxysm of coughing that left him weak and
breathless, and nearly eliminated him from the question, altogether.

When the Fairlands Heights party had departed, Conrad Lagrange looked the
artist up and down.

"Well,"--he growled harshly, in his most brutal tones,--"what is it? Is
the dog returning to his vomit?--or is the prodigal turning his back on
his hogs and his husks?"

Aaron King smiled as he answered, "I think, rather, it's the case of the
blind beggar who sat by the roadside, helpless, until a certain Great
Physician passed that way."

And Conrad Lagrange understood.

Chapter XXVIII

You're Ruined, My Boy

It was no light task to which Aaron King had set his hand. He did not
doubt what it would cost him. Nor did Conrad Lagrange, as they talked
together that evening, fail to point out clearly what it would mean to the
artist, at the very beginning of his career, to fly thus rudely in the
face of the providence that had chosen to serve him. The world's history
of art and letters affords too many examples of men who, because they
refused to pay court to the ruling cliques and circles of their little
day, had seen the doors of recognition slammed in their faces; and who,
even as they wrought their great works, had been forced to hear, as they
toiled, the discordant yelpings of the self-appointed watchdogs of the
halls of fame. Nor did the artist question the final outcome,--if only his
work should be found worthy to endure,--for the world's history
establishes, also, the truth--that he who labors for a higher wage than an
approving paragraph in the daily pape