he replied, with more quickness of manner. "It
is to be the subject of my last lecture. Ladies, school must close
to-day."

Esther and Catherine glanced at each other. "You are going to send us
away?" asked Catherine in a tone of surprise.

"You must go for the present," answered Wharton. "I mean to tell you the
reason, and then you will see why I can't paint innocence as you can. As
a lecture on art, my life is worth hearing, but don't interrupt the
story or you will lose it. Begin by keeping in your mind that twenty
years ago I was a ragged boy in the streets of Cincinnati. The drawing
master in a public school to which I went, said I had a natural talent
for drawing, and taught me all he knew. Then a little purse was made up
for me and I was sent to Paris. Not yet twenty years old, I found myself
dropped into that great sewer of a city, a shy, ill-clothed, ill-fed,
ill-educated boy, knowing no more of the world above me than a fish
knows of the birds. For two years I knocked about in a studio till my
money was used up, and then I knew enough to be able to earn a few
francs to keep me alive. Then I went down to Italy and of course got a
fever. I came back at last to Paris, half-fed, dyspeptic and morbid. I
had visions, and the worst vision of my life I am going to tell you.

"It was after I had been some years at work and had got already a little
reputation among Americans, that I was at my worst. Nothing seemed real.
What earned me my first success was an attempt I made to paint the
strange figures and fancies which possessed me. I studied nothing but
the most extravagant subjects. For a time nothing would satisfy me but
to draw from models at moments of intense suffering and at the instant
of death. Models of that kind do not offer themselves and are not to be
bought. I made friends with the surgeons and got myself admitted to one
of the great hospitals. I happened to be there one day when a woman was
brought in suffering from an overdose of arsenic. This was the kind of
subject I wanted. She was fierce, splendid, a priestess of the oracle!
Tortured by agony and clinging to it as though it were a delight! The
next day I came back to look for her: she was then exhausted and half
dead. She was a superb model, and I took an interest in her. When she
grew better I talked with her and found that she was a sort of Parisian
Pole with a strange history. She had been living as an actress at one of
the small theaters, and h