the painting of this picture a certain candour
amounting to stupidity--an uncertainty--a naive, groping sort of brush
work. It seemed to be technically, almost deliberately, muddled.

There was a tentative timidity about it that surprised his own technical
assurance--almost moved him to contempt.

What had he been trying to do? For what had he been searching in those
slow, laborious, almost painful brush strokes--in that clumsy groping
for values, in the painstaking reticence, the joyless and mathematical
establishment of a sombre and uninspiring key, in the patient plotting
of simpler planes where space and quiet reigned unaccented?

"Lord!" he said, biting his lip. "I've been stung by the microbe of the
precious! I'll be talking Art next with both thumbs and a Vandyke
beard."

Still, through his self-disgust, a sensation of respect for the canvas
at which he was scowling, persisted. Nor could he account for the
perfectly unwelcome and involuntary idea that there was, about the
half-finished portrait, something almost dignified in the very candour
of its painting.

John Burleson came striding in while he was still examining it. He
usually came about tea time, and the door was left open after five
o'clock.

"O-ho!" he said in his big, unhumorous voice, "what in hell and the name
of Jimmy Whistler have we here?"

"Mud," said Neville, shortly--"like Mr. Whistler's."

"He was muddy--sometimes," said John, seriously, "but _you_ never were
until this."

"Oh, I know it, Johnny. Something infected me. I merely tried to do what
isn't in me. And this is the result. When a man decides he has a
mission, you can never tell what fool thing he'll be guilty of."

"It's Valerie West, isn't it?" demanded John, bluntly.

"She won't admire you for finding any resemblance," said Neville,
laughing.

The big sculptor rubbed his big nose reflectively.

"After all," he said, "what is so bad about it, Kelly?"

"Oh, everything."

"No, it isn't. There's something about it that's--different--and
interesting--"

"Oh, shut up, John, and fix yourself a drink--"

"Kelly, I'm telling you that it isn't bad--that there's something
terribly solid and sincere about this beginning--"

He looked around with a bovine grunt as Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan came
mincing in: "I say, you would-be funny fellows!--come over and tell
Kelly Neville that he's got a pretty good thing here if he only has the
brains to develop it!"

Neville lighte