ay," he said. "It's a matter of feeling. I never judge a
book or picture, but when I _feel_ them, they are good to me. I would
have stopped before some of these in any gallery, because I feel them.
They make me steal away----"

"I'm hard-hearted and a scoffer," she said, holding fast. "It isn't
that I want to be--oh, you are different. I don't believe you were ever
_tired_!... I see what David Cairns meant about your coming up here out
of the seas with a fresh eye--and all your ideals.... Don't you
see--we're all tired out! New York has made us put our ideals
away--commercial, romantic--every sort of ideal.... Oh, it's harder for
a woman to talk like this than for a man; she's slower to learn it.
When a woman does learn it, you may know she carries scars----"

The Grey One arose. She looked tall and gaunt, and her eyes had that
burning look which dries tears before they can be shed. He did not
hasten to speak.

"It's crude to talk so to you, but you came _to-day_," she went on. "I
had about given up. The race--oh, it's a race to sanctuary right
enough--but so long!... In the forenoons one can run, but strength
doesn't last."

With a quick movement, the Grey One tossed up the covering from the
easel. He saw a girl in red, natty figure, piquant face. It was not
finished. She was to stand at the head of a saddle-horse, as yet
embryonic. She stepped hastily to a little desk and poked at a
formidable pile of business-looking correspondence.

"Do these look like an artist's communications?" she asked in the dry
pent way that goes with burning eyes.... "They are not, but letters to
one who paints for lithographers' stones! See here----"

And now she lifted a couch-cover, and drew from beneath a big portfolio
which she opened on the floor before him. It was filled with flaring
magazine covers, calendars, and other painted products having to do
with that expensive sort of advertising which packing-houses and
steel-shops afford. _Girls_--girls mounted side and astride, girls in
racing-shells and skiting motor-boats, in limousines and runabouts, in
dirigibles and 'planes;--seaside, mountain and prairie girls;
house-boat, hunting and skating girls; even a vivid parlor variety--all
conventional, colorful and unsigned.

"Eight years in Europe for these," she said in a dragging, morbid tone.
"And the letters on the table say I may do more, as the managers of
shirt-waist factories might say to poor sewing-women when business is