t, bony horses, he paused, struck by its force. He liked the
delineation of swirling, wind-driven snow. The emptiness of this
thoroughfare, usually so crowded, the buttoned, huddled, hunched,
withdrawn look of those who traveled it, the exceptional details of
piles of snow sifted on to window sills and ledges and into doorways and
on to the windows of the bus itself, attracted his attention.

"An effective detail," he said to Eugene, as one critic might say to
another, pointing to a line of white snow on the window of one side of
the bus. Another dash of snow on a man's hat rim took his eye also. "I
can feel the wind," he added.

Eugene smiled.

M. Charles passed on in silence to the steaming tug coming up the East
River in the dark hauling two great freight barges. He was saying to
himself that after all Eugene's art was that of merely seizing upon the
obviously dramatic. It wasn't so much the art of color composition and
life analysis as it was stage craft. The man before him had the ability
to see the dramatic side of life. Still--

He turned to the last reproduction which was that of Greeley Square in a
drizzling rain. Eugene by some mystery of his art had caught the exact
texture of seeping water on gray stones in the glare of various electric
lights. He had caught the values of various kinds of lights, those in
cabs, those in cable cars, those in shop windows, those in the street
lamp--relieving by them the black shadows of the crowds and of the sky.
The color work here was unmistakably good.

"How large are the originals of these?" he asked thoughtfully.

"Nearly all of them thirty by forty."

Eugene could not tell by his manner whether he were merely curious or
interested.

"All of them done in oil, I fancy."

"Yes, all."

"They are not bad, I must say," he observed cautiously. "A little
persistently dramatic but--"

"These reproductions--" began Eugene, hoping by criticising the press
work to interest him in the superior quality of the originals.

"Yes, I see," M. Charles interrupted, knowing full well what was coming.
"They are very bad. Still they show well enough what the originals are
like. Where is your studio?"

"61 Washington Square."

"As I say," went on M. Charles, noting the address on Eugene's card,
"the opportunity for exhibition purposes is very limited and our charge
is rather high. We have so many things we would like to exhibit--so many
things we must exhibit. It is hard to say