oad, and do so quite cheerfully. Confine yourself
to something that makes an equal demand on your hands, your eyes and your
brain. In short, return to your old love and try your hand again on
sculpture. Perhaps in a few months you will be the creator of a
world-famous Madonna in polychrome wood."

"You are mistaken in me," Frederick rejoined. "I do nothing but blow soap
bubbles. Leave me to my illusion, that there is a great artist in me
awaiting the moment of self-expression and development. What I am really
much more fitted for is to be Mr. Ritter's coachman, or valet, or at best
his business manager."

XIV

Miss Burns took out her little purse, refusing to let Frederick pay for
her, and they stepped out again into the busy streets.

"By Jove," said Frederick, whose manner when in the hurly-burly changed
completely, "what a lot of stuff I have been chattering! I deserve to be
punished for trying your patience to such an extent. I must have bored
you horribly."

"Oh, no," she said, "I am accustomed to such conversations. I have
associated with artists for many years."

"Do you mean to impugn my truthfulness, Miss Burns?" Frederick asked in
some alarm.

"No, but I think," she said calmly, with almost masculine firmness, "that
if nature makes us suffer through something, she does not intend us to
suffer again and again from the same thing. It seems to me the Creator
had a definite intention in always and everywhere placing night and sleep
between day and day."

"Not always and not everywhere," Frederick observed, thinking of the
difficulty he had had for many nights in snatching a few hours' sleep.

At a street crossing Miss Burns stopped to wait for a car to take her
back to the studio.

"Look at that," said Frederick, pointing to six similar placards of
gigantic dimensions, which represented Mara, the Spider's Victim, in
screaming colours. A green stripe was pasted slantwise on each placard,
announcing that the dancer had been suffering from the consequences of
the shipwreck, but that she would appear at Webster and Forster's the
next day for the first time in America. Above the advertisement on the
same wall were seven or eight full-length pictures of Arthur Stoss larger
than life-size.

"Your little friend invited Mr. Ritter to a rehearsal in a theatre on
Broadway day after to-morrow. It was not Webster and Forster's," said
Miss Burns. Frederick explained what had happened in connection with
Mr