kills _him_. I call it masterly."

"Well, don't go and spoil it now," said Cornelia. "And if you're going
to ask me every day how you've done----"

"Oh, I'm not! Only the first day and the last day!"

"Well!"

As Ludlow walked with Cornelia toward the point where she was to take
her car down town, he began, "You see, she is _so_ dramatic, that if
you tried to do her in any other way--that is, simply--you would be
doing her artificially. You have to take her as she is, don't you
think?"

"I don't know as I think Charmian is acting all the time, if that's
what you mean," said Cornelia. "Or any of the time, even."

Ludlow wished she had said she did not know _that_ instead of _as_, but
he reflected that ninety Americans out of a hundred, lettered or
unlettered, would have said the same. "Oh, I don't at all mean that she
is, intentionally. It's because it's her nature that I want to
recognize it. You think it _is_ her nature, don't you?" he asked
deferentially.

"Oh, I suppose it is," she answered; it amused her to have him take
such a serious tone about Charmian.

"I shall have to depend a great deal on your judgment in that matter,"
he went on. "You won't mind it, I hope?"

"Not if you won't mind it's not being worth anything."

"It will be worth everything!"

"Or if you won't care for my not giving it, sometimes."

"I don't understand."

"Well, I shouldn't want to seem to talk her over."

"Oh, no! You _don't_ think I expected you to do that? It was merely the
right point of view I wanted to get."

"I don't know as I object to that," said Cornelia.

The car which she wished to take came by, and he stopped it and handed
her aboard. She thought he might decide to come with her, but he bowed
his good-night, and she saw him walking on down town as she passed him.

At the end of a fortnight Ludlow had failed to get his picture of
Charmian; at the end of a month he began with a new pose and a fresh
theory. That quality of hers which he hoped to surprise with Cornelia's
help, and which was to give verity and value to his portrait, when once
he expressed it there, escaped him still.

She was capable of perfect poses, but they were mere flashes of
attitude. Then the antique mystery lurking in her face went out of it,
and she became _fin de siecle_ and romantic, and young ladyish, and
uninteresting to Ludlow.

She made tea every afternoon when they finished, and sometimes the talk
they began with before th