orld it was;
but he washed his hands of it. The fault was in human nature, and he
reflected with pride that he had at least not invented human nature; he
had not sunk so low as that yet. The notion amused him; he thought he
might get a Satanic epigram out of it some way. But in the mean time
that girl, that wild animal, she kept visibly, tangibly before him; if
he put out his hand he might touch hers, he might pass his arm round
her waist. In Paris, in a set he knew there, what an effect she would be
with that look of hers, and that beauty, all out of drawing! They would
recognize the flame quality in her. He imagined a joke about her being
a fiery spirit, or nymph, naiad, whatever, from one of her native
gas-wells. He began to sketch on a bit of paper from the table at his
elbow vague lines that veiled and revealed a level, dismal landscape,
and a vast flame against an empty sky, and a shape out of the flame that
took on a likeness and floated detached from it. The sketch ran up the
left side of the sheet and stretched across it. Beaton laughed out.
Pretty good to let Fulkerson have that for the cover of his first
number! In black and red it would be effective; it would catch the eye
from the news-stands. He made a motion to throw it on the fire, but held
it back and slid it into the table-drawer, and smoked on. He saw the
dummy with the other sketch in the open drawer which he had brought away
from Fulkerson's in the morning and slipped in there, and he took it out
and looked at it. He made some criticisms in line with his pencil on it,
correcting the drawing here and there, and then he respected it a little
more, though he still smiled at the feminine quality--a young lady
quality.

In spite of his experience the night he called upon the Leightons,
Beaton could not believe that Alma no longer cared for him. She played
at having forgotten him admirably, but he knew that a few months before
she had been very mindful of him. He knew he had neglected them since
they came to New York, where he had led them to expect interest, if not
attention; but he was used to neglecting people, and he was somewhat
less used to being punished for it--punished and forgiven. He felt
that Alma had punished him so thoroughly that she ought to have been
satisfied with her work and to have forgiven him in her heart afterward.
He bore no resentment after the first tingling moments were-past; he
rather admired her for it; and he would have been