you to accept?"

"No, you don't."

"That is, to consent to help us with your advice and criticism. That's
all I want. It won't commit you to anything; and you can be as anonymous
as anybody." At the door Fulkerson added: "By-the-way, the new man--the
fellow that's taken my old syndicate business--will want you to keep
on; but I guess he's going to try to beat you down on the price of the
letters. He's going in for retrenchment. I brought along a check for
this one; I'm to pay for that." He offered Beaton an envelope.

"I can't take it, Fulkerson. The letter's paid for already." Fulkerson
stepped forward and laid the envelope on the table among the tubes of
paint.

"It isn't the letter merely. I thought you wouldn't object to a little
advance on your 'Every Other Week' work till you kind of got started."

Beaton remained inflexible. "It can't be done, Fulkerson. Don't I tell
you I can't sell myself out to a thing I don't believe in? Can't you
understand that?"

"Oh yes; I can understand that first-rate. I don't want to buy you; I
want to borrow you. It's all right. See? Come round when you can; I'd
like to introduce you to old March. That's going to be our address." He
put a card on the table beside the envelope, and Beaton allowed him
to go without making him take the check back. He had remembered his
father's plea; that unnerved him, and he promised himself again to
return his father's poor little check and to work on that picture and
give it to Fulkerson for the check he had left and for his back debts.
He resolved to go to work on the picture at once; he had set his palette
for it; but first he looked at Fulkerson's check. It was for only fifty
dollars, and the canny Scotch blood in Beaton rebelled; he could not let
this picture go for any such money; he felt a little like a man whose
generosity has been trifled with. The conflict of emotions broke him up,
and he could not work.

IV

The day wasted away in Beaton's hands; at half-past four o'clock he went
out to tea at the house of a lady who was At Home that afternoon from
four till seven. By this time Beaton was in possession of one of those
other selves of which we each have several about us, and was again the
laconic, staccato, rather worldlified young artist whose moments of a
controlled utterance and a certain distinction of manner had commended
him to Mrs. Horn's fancy in the summer at St. Barnaby.

Mrs. Horn's rooms were large, and they never