ole volume of new leaves.

"What happened?" Barbara asked.

Blizzard laughed. "I cannot be said to have run away," he answered, "but
I got away as best I could, and stayed away. My father settled money
upon me. And that was the end of our relations."

"And then," said Barbara, "you, being young and foolish, lost your
money."

"Oh, no!" he exclaimed. "I was a very bad little boy, but much too
ambitious to be foolish. And you know you can't get very far in this
world without money."

"Still," said Barbara, "a hand-organ and a tin cup?"

"A loiterer in the streets of New York," the beggar explained, "picks up
knowledge not to be had in any other way. Knowledge is power."

"Then you don't have to beg, don't have to pose, don't have to do
anything you don't want to do?"

"Oh, yes, I do. I have to crawl while others walk. I have to wait and
procrastinate, where another might rush in and dare."

Again that first expression of Satan fallen overpowered the casual ease
and even levity of his face. But he shifted his eyes lest Barbara see
into them and be frightened by that which smouldered in their
stony depths.

Without a word, Barbara stepped eagerly forward to the rough model that
she had made of his head, and once more attacked her inspiration with
eager hands. The beggar held himself motionless like a thing of stone,
only his eyes roved a little, drinking in, you may say, that white
loveliness which was Barbara at such moments as her own eyes were upon
her work, and turning swiftly away when she lifted them in scrutiny of
him. Now and then she made measurements of him with a pair of compasses.
At such times it seemed to him that her nearness was more than his
unschooled passions could bear with any appearance of apathy. Though a
child of the nineteenth century, he had been enabled for many years to
give way, almost whenever he pleased, to the instincts of primitive man,
which, except for the greater frequency of their occurrence, differ in
no essential way from the instincts of wild beasts.

Had she been a girl of the East Side he would not have hesitated upon
the present occasion or in the present surroundings. But she was a girl
of wealth and high position. It was not enough that his hands could
stifle an outcry, or that the policeman upon the nearest beat was more
in his own employ than in that of the city. Cold reason showed him that
in the present case impunity was for once doubtful.

Her hands dropped fr