ture-dealer in Piccadilly and New
Bond Street. It was all in vain. Everywhere the Witch was pronounced to
be beautiful, but unsalable. She was bowed out of every shop-door with
polite regret, expressed in one formula: "The demand for this kind of
work is really so small that we could only offer you a nominal sum,
madam." Finally, Katherine turned into a small shop in Westminster, only
to receive the same answer. But this time she was desperate. "What do
you call a nominal sum?" The dealer looked the picture up and down; he
noted, too, the shabby cloak and worn face of the artist.

"Frame included, five guineas. Not a shilling more, miss."

"I'll take that," she said, almost greedily. And the Witch was handed
over the counter in exchange for the tenth part of her value.

But five guineas were a mere drop in the ocean of their necessities.

Two days later Katherine set out again, no longer alert and eager, but
with a white face, a firm mouth, and a bearing so emphatically resolute
that it suggested a previous agony of indecision. She took a 'bus from
Lupus Street to the City. Getting out at Leadenhall Street, she walked
on till she came to a building where an arrow painted on the doorway
guided her to the offices of Messrs. Pigott & Co., on the third floor.
On and on she went, up the broad stone stairs, with a sick heart and
trembling knees, the steepest, weariest climb she had ever made in a
life of climbing. When she reached the third floor she almost turned
back at the sight of the closed door marked "Private." Then the thought
of Vincent lying in his wretched room, a sudden blinding vision of his
white face laid back on the pillows, overcame the last rebellion of her
pride. She knocked; a well-regulated voice answered, "Who is there?" She
brushed her eyelashes with her hand and walked in.

"It's me, uncle."

Mr. Pigott almost started from his seat. "You, Katherine? Bless me! Dear
me, dear me!" He put on his spectacles, and examined her as if she had
been some curious animal. And he, too, noticed not only her frayed skirt
and the worn edges of the fur about her cloak, but the sharp lines of
her face and the black shadows under her eyes.

"Sit down, my dear."

She obeyed, putting her elbow on the office table and resting her head
in her hand. She looked defiantly, almost fiercely, before her, and
spoke in a cold, hard voice--

"I've come to ask you if you'll lend us some money. We're in debt----"

"In debt? T