vous ad the devil. Step back there--there by that mullein. So! I've
got to face my protagonist. Yes, I've been asking her to marry me."

Marshby stiffened. His head went up, his jaw tightened. He looked the
jealous ire of the male.

"What do you want me to stand here for?" he asked, irritably.

"But she refused me," said Wilmer, cheerfully. "Stand still, that's a
good fellow. I'm using you."

Marshby had by an effort pulled himself together. He dismissed Mary from
his mind, as he wished to drive her from the other man's speech.

"I've been reading the morning paper on your exhibition," he said,
bringing out the journal from his pocket. "They can't say enough about
you."

"Oh, can't they! Well, the better for me. What are they pleased to
discover?"

"They say you see round corners and through deal boards. Listen." He
struck open the paper and read: "'A man with a hidden crime upon his
soul will do well to elude this greatest of modern magicians. The man
with a secret tells it the instant he sits down before Jerome Wilmer.
Wilmer does not paint faces, brows, hands. He paints hopes, fears, and
longings. If we could, in our turn, get to the heart of his mystery! If
we could learn whether he says to himself: "I see hate in that face,
hypocrisy, greed. I will paint them. That man is not man, but cur. He
shall fawn on my canvas." Or does he paint through a kind of inspired
carelessness, and as the line obeys the eye and hand, so does the
emotion live in the line?'"

"Oh, gammon!" snapped Wilmer.

"Well, do you?" said Marshby, tossing the paper to the little table
where Mary's work-box stood.

"Do I what? Spy and then paint, or paint and find I've spied? Oh, I
guess I plug along like any other decent workman. When it comes to that,
how do you write your essays?"

"I! Oh! That's another pair of sleeves. Your work is colossal. I'm still
on cherry-stones."

"Well," said Wilmer, with slow incisiveness, "you've accomplished one
thing I'd sell my name for. You've got Mary Brinsley bound to you so
fast that neither lure nor lash can stir her. I've tried it--tried Paris
even, the crudest bribe there is. No good! She won't have me."

At her name, Marshby straightened again, and there was fire in his eye.
Wilmer, sketching him in, seemed to gain distinct impulse from the pose,
and worked the faster.

"Don't move," he ordered. "There, that's right. So, you see, you're the
successful chap. I'm the failure. She won't have