been saying?" she asked, in laughing challenge, yet with
a note of anxiety underneath.

"I'm painting him in," said Wilmer; but as she came toward him he turned
the canvas dexterously. "No," said he, "no. I've got my idea from this.
To-morrow Marshby's going to sit."

That was all he would say, and Mary put it aside as one of his
pleasantries made to fit the hour. But next day he set up a big canvas
in the barn that served him as workroom, and summoned Marshby from his
books. He came dressed exactly right, in his every-day clothes that had
comfortable wrinkles in them, and easily took his pose. For all his
concern over the inefficiency of his life, as a life, he was entirely
without self-consciousness in his personal habit. Jerome liked that, and
began to like him better as he knew him more. A strange illuminative
process went on in his mind toward the man as Mary saw him, and more and
more he nursed a fretful sympathy with her desire to see Marshby tuned
up to some pitch that should make him livable to himself. It seemed a
cruelty of nature that any man should so scorn his own company and yet
be forced to keep it through an allotted span. In that sitting Marshby
was at first serious and absent-minded. Though his body was obediently
there, the spirit seemed to be busy somewhere else.

"Head up!" cried Jerome at last, brutally. "Heavens, man, don't skulk!"

Marshby straightened under the blow. It hit harder, as Jerome meant it
should, than any verbal rallying. It sent the man back over his own
life to the first stumble in it.

"I want you to look as if you heard drums and fife," Jerome explained,
with one of his quick smiles, that always wiped out former injury.

But the flush was not yet out of Marshby's face, and he answered,
bitterly, "I might run."

"I don't mind your looking as if you'd like to run and knew you
couldn't," said Jerome, dashing in strokes now in a happy certainty.

"Why couldn't I?" asked Marshby, still from that abiding scorn of his
own ways.

"Because you can't, that's all. Partly because you get the habit of
facing the music. I should like--" Wilmer had an unconsidered way of
entertaining his sitters, without much expenditure to himself; he
pursued a fantastic habit of talk to keep their blood moving, and did it
with the eye of the mind unswervingly on his work. "If I were you, I'd
do it. I'd write an essay on the muscular habit of courage. Your coward
is born weak-kneed. He shouldn't spi