y, "he's told me everything, I think, but what I'm
interested in now is--what are you going to do with this stuff?"

"I don't know," he said, slackly. "It depends on how I feel. Some
days"--his eyes shifted and fled before her gaze--"well, you know how it
is yourself with your own work,--when you're in the mood--when you have
an inspiration----"

"I don't know anything about that sort of piffle," said his guest,
severely. "It's my mood to beat my poet's piano four solid hours a day,
and I shouldn't know an inspiration if I met one in my mush bowl!"

He produced a nervous laugh. "Ah,--but you have your market! You're
_there_! There's the urge--the spur----"

She looked from the crisp and living lines of his pictures to his dead,
young flesh, to his fingers, locked together and straining, to keep them
from their telltale plucking. "Look here," she said, "why shouldn't we do
something together?"

"We--togeth--" he sat down limply on the end of his bed-couch, staring,
and she heard Michael's quickened breath behind her.

"Yes! Let's try a calendar of New York. I've always had one in the attic
of my mind. Twelve pictures, you know, with bits of verse, of
prose,--sketches like these of yours here. There are several which would
do just as they stand. This sort of thing, you know, but balanced--Grand
Street pushcarts and a group of girls going into Lucy-Gertrude's on Fifth
Avenue."

"I get you," he cried, jumping to his feet. "Colonel's lady and Judy
O'Grady----"

"But no propaganda!"

"No, no,--cut the Sob Sister stuff,--just the pattern of it all, the
mosaic----"

"Yes,--done objectively!"

"Right! Gad,--that sounds like a corking idea! When can we start? Have
you the text or--Good Lord--my eats!" He dashed to the noisy chafing-dish,
a faint color creeping up into the unpleasant whiteness of his skin.
"Everything's done! Where will you sit, Miss Vail? Give her this tray,
will you, Daragh--_and_ the napkin, man! Can she reach the sandwiches?
Oh, I'm forgetting my perfectly good salad! Well, how is it? I'm not
much of a cheffonier, but----"

"It's melt-in-the-mouth," said Miss Vail, warmly. "I'm going to have
twice of everything!" She drew him out; she led him on; she kept the
color in his face and his fingers quiet. By every pretty means in her
power she made it clear that she was having an uncommonly good time, that
he was distinctly her sort of person.

Michael Daragh sat back with deep wonder in his eyes. I