ter of fact, he never did send it; but he happened to meet Mr.
Wetmore and his wife at the restaurant where he dined, and he got it
of the painter for himself. He did not ask him how Miss Leighton was
getting on; but Wetmore launched out, with Alma for a tacit text, on
the futility of women generally going in for art. "Even when they have
talent they've got too much against them. Where a girl doesn't seem very
strong, like Miss Leighton, no amount of chic is going to help."

His wife disputed him on behalf of her sex, as women always do.

"No, Dolly," he persisted; "she'd better be home milking the cows and
leading the horse to water."

"Do you think she'd better be up till two in the morning at balls and
going all day to receptions and luncheons?"

"Oh, guess it isn't a question of that, even if she weren't drawing. You
knew them at home," he said to Beaton.

"Yes."

"I remember. Her mother said you suggested me. Well, the girl has some
notion of it; there's no doubt about that. But--she's a woman. The
trouble with these talented girls is that they're all woman. If they
weren't, there wouldn't be much chance for the men, Beaton. But we've
got Providence on our own side from the start. I'm able to watch all
their inspirations with perfect composure. I know just how soon it's
going to end in nervous breakdown. Somebody ought to marry them all and
put them out of their misery."

"And what will you do with your students who are married already?" his
wife said. She felt that she had let him go on long enough.

"Oh, they ought to get divorced."

"You ought to be ashamed to take their money if that's what you think of
them."

"My dear, I have a wife to support."

Beaton intervened with a question. "Do you mean that Miss Leighton isn't
standing it very well?"

"How do I know? She isn't the kind that bends; she's the kind that
breaks."

After a little silence Mrs. Wetmore asked, "Won't you come home with us,
Mr. Beaton?"

"Thank you; no. I have an engagement."

"I don't see why that should prevent you," said Wetmore. "But you always
were a punctilious cuss. Well!"

Beaton lingered over his cigar; but no one else whom he knew came in,
and he yielded to the threefold impulse of conscience, of curiosity,
of inclination, in going to call at the Leightons'. He asked for the
ladies, and the maid showed him into the parlor, where he found Mrs.
Leighton and Miss Woodburn.

The widow met him with a welcome neatly