ces, if drawn out to their natural
conclusions, are apt to be uncomfortable, if not dull. She did not
want him to go down on his knees, knowing that the getting up again
is always awkward.

"Clara, I began to think you were never coming," said Mrs. Broughton,
with her sweetest smile.

"I began to think so myself also," said Clara. "And I believe this
must be the last sitting, or, at any rate, the last but one."

"Is anything the matter at home?" said Mrs. Broughton, clasping her
hands together.

"Nothing very much; mamma asked me a question or two this morning,
and I said I was coming here. Had she asked me why, I should have
told her."

"But what did she ask? What did she say?"

"She does not always make herself very intelligible. She complains
without telling you what she complains of. But she muttered something
about artists which was not complimentary, and I suppose therefore
that she has a suspicion. She stayed ever so late this morning,
and we left the house together. She will ask some direct question
to-night, or before long, and then there will be an end of it."

"Let us make the best of our time, then," said Dalrymple; and the
sitting was arranged; Miss Van Siever went down on her knees with her
hammer in her hand, and the work began. Mrs. Broughton had twisted a
turban round Clara's head, as she always did on these occasions, and
assisted to arrange the drapery. She used to tell herself as she did
so, that she was like Isaac, piling the fagots for her own sacrifice.
Only Isaac had piled them in ignorance, and she piled them conscious
of the sacrificial flames. And Isaac had been saved; whereas it was
impossible that the catching of any ram in any thicket could save
her. But, nevertheless, she arranged the drapery with all her skill,
piling the fagots ever so high for her own pyre. In the meantime
Conway Dalrymple painted away, thinking more of his picture than he
did of one woman or of the other.

[Illustration: Mrs. Dobbs Broughton piles her Fagots.]

After a while when Mrs. Broughton had piled the fagots as high as she
could pile them, she got up from her seat and prepared to leave the
room. Much of the piling consisted, of course, in her own absence
during a portion of these sittings. "Conway," she said, as she went,
"if this is to be the last sitting, or the last but one, you should
make the most of it." Then she threw upon him a very peculiar glance
over the head of the kneeling Jael, and with