nto pies!"

When he was chilled through and his hands were numb, Gerald remembered
to pick up his candle and go to bed. No change of opinion, it is
needless to say, had resulted from his midnight inquiry.

A point of natural spite made him say that he did not ask people to like
his pictures. All he asked was permission to go on painting as he
pleased, obscure and independent, the sincere apostle of a peculiar
creed, working out his problems with conscience and fidelity. If fate
might send him critics whose opinion he valued he would be properly
grateful. He felt the need of criticism and companionship, in his work,
but had no regard for his fellow artists in Florence. His thoughts
turned sometimes with envy toward Paris, where modern art had some
vitality, and artist life the advantage of stimulating associations.
There was a good deal of talk at the time, and some derision, of a new
phase called impressionism, whose chief seat was Paris.

As for the opinion of such a person as Mrs. Hawthorne, it obviously had
no value. But while the artist could brush her aside in the character of
critic, it remained a little galling to the man to know he figured in
her mind as a painter who did not know how to paint.

"Can't paint for sour apples!" he seemed to hear her reporting to
Estelle, and got in his mouth the taste of the apples.

CHAPTER XI

When Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne to sit for him, she stared in his face
without a word.

"Don't be afraid," he hastened to reassure her; "I engage to paint a
portrait you will like."

She felt herself blush for the dismay she had not been able to conceal,
and to hide this embarrassment she lifted to her face--not the
handkerchief or the bouquet with which beauty is wont to cover the
telltale signal in the cheek, but a wee dog, as white as a handkerchief
and no less sweet than a bouquet. She rubbed her nose fondlingly in the
soft silk of his breast, while, tickled, he tried, with baby growls and
an exposure of sharp pin teeth, to get a bite at it.

Gerald looked on with simple pleasure. Because he had given Aurora that
dog. On the day of making a scene because she was to receive a dog from
Hunt he had set to work to find one for her himself, the prior
possession of which would make it natural to decline Charlie's, if, as
Gerald doubted, Charlie's offer had been anything more than facile
compliment. And now, instead of the torment to his nerves of seeing her
fondle and kis