r the
exhibition too?" She looked past him, at the big canvas; and he, watching
her curiously stepped aside.

Parts of the picture were little more than sketched in, but still, line
and color spoke with accusing truth the spirit of the company that had
gathered at the banquet in the home on Fairlands Heights, the night of Mr.
Taine's death. The figures were not portraits, it is true, but they
expressed with striking fidelity, the lives and characters of those who
had, that night, been assembled by Mrs. Taine to meet the artist. The
figure in the picture, standing with uplifted glass and drunken pose at
the head of the table--with bestial, lust-worn face, disease-shrunken
limbs, and dying, licentious eyes fixed upon the beautiful girl
musician--might easily have been Mr. Taine himself. The distinguished
writers, and critics; the representatives of the social world and of
wealth; Conrad Lagrange with cold, cynical, mocking, smile; Mrs. Taine
with her pretense of modest dress that only emphasized her immodesty; and,
in the midst of the unclean minded crew, the lovely innocence and the
unconscious purity of the mountain girl with her violin, offering to them
that which they were incapable of receiving--it was all there upon the
canvas, as the artist had seen it that night. The picture cried aloud the
intellectual degradation and the spiritual depravity of that class who,
arrogating to themselves the authority of leaders in culture and art, by
their approval and patronage of dangerous falsehood and sham in picture or
story, make possible such characters as James Rutlidge.

Aaron King, watching Mrs. Taine as she looked at the picture on the easel,
saw a look of doubt and uncertainty come over her face. Once, she turned
toward him, as if to speak; but, without a word, looked again at the
canvas. She seemed perplexed and puzzled, as though she caught glimpses of
something in the picture that she did not rightly understand Then, as she
looked, her eyes kindled with contemptuous scorn, and there was a
pronounced sneer in her cold tones as she said, "Really, I don't believe I
care for you to do this sort of thing." She laughed shortly. "It reminds
one a little of that dinner at our house. Don't you think? It's the girl
with the violin, I suppose."

"There are no portraits in it, Mrs. Taine," said the artist, quietly.

"No? Well, I think you'd better stick to your portraits. This is a great
picture though," she admitted thoughtf