paints."

"There's hope for you, Jane, if you admit at the start that you are a
heretic."

"I have to tell the truth. I am not clever enough to bluff."

"So you think that Bobs is a genius."

"Yes. I feel that she has the divine fire."

"Has she sold anything this winter?"

"I think not."

"How does she get along?"

"Borrows the rent, eats around with anybody who has food. When she sells
something she will repay it two-fold."

"Poor old Bobs! Ask her down by all means."

"She's splendid, I think."

"But you wouldn't like to live as she does."

"I would not care, if my spirit were growing as hers is."

"You'd miss your cream, Kitty, and your sunny garden."

"Yes, but the whole world would gain by my loss."

"I wonder if that is a comfort?" Jerry mused. "Somebody ought to marry
Bobs."

"She has the usual woman's excuse for marrying."

"What is that?"

"A lonely soul. I suppose men have it, too--a sort of isolation within
the race, a pining to be set free from the torment of solitude. Bobs has
an exceptional nature, so she is more than usually at the mercy of
suffering; her needs are intensified."

"She has all sorts of ideas, you know, about freedom in love, the right
to motherhood, and all the rest of it. That's what's the matter with
her; she's got a lot of crank notions that won't work out."

Jane laughed.

"What's the matter?"

"I was wondering if you had considered Bobs's ideas seriously enough to
damn them so finally."

"No, I haven't. I have no patience with them."

"'Where ignorance is bliss,' says Jerry!" Jane teased.

He was putting away his painting things, from which he looked up and
flushed.

"Look here, Jane, don't treat me like the little boy who upset the jam!"

"Don't talk like him, then, little boy Jerry," was her smiling answer.

CHAPTER XVII

In July the Paxtons were asked to spend a week with the Abercrombie
Brendons, at their country place. One of the guests was to be a woman
who wanted her portrait painted, because she admired Jerry's portrait of
Mrs. Brendon so extravagantly. Jerry read the note, which Jane passed to
him, at the breakfast table one morning.

"How do you feel about it?"

"Would you mind if I stayed here? Bobs could come and keep me company."

"You look all right, if that's it."

"I'll go, if you think I should, Jerry."

"I don't see why you should, if it would bore you. I don't want to go
myself, I like it here. Suppose you writ