tion.

When they reached his rooms, Kemper had not returned, and while Gerty
amused herself by examining every photograph upon his desk and mantel,
Laura drew a chair before the portrait, which was a bold, half-length
study painted with a daring breadth of handling. The artist was a new
French painter, who had leaped into prominence because of a certain
extravagance of style which he affected; and his work had taken Kemper's
fancy as everything took it either in art or in life which deviated in
any marked eccentricity from the ordinary level of culture or of
experience.

"There's something queer about it--I don't like it," said Laura, with
her first glance. "Why, it makes him look almost brutal--there's a
quality in it I'll never grow accustomed to."

Then, as she looked a moment longer at the picture, she saw that the
quality in Kemper which the painter had caught and arrested with an
excellent technique upon the canvas, was the resemblance to Perry
Bridewell which had offended her when she noticed it the other day. It
was there, evidently--this foreign painter had seized upon it as the
most subtle characteristic of Kemper's face--and in dwelling upon it in
the portrait as he had done, she realised that he had attempted to
produce, not so much the likeness of the man, as a startling, almost
sinister study of a personality. What he had shown her was the
temperament, not the face of her lover--not her lover, indeed, she told
herself the next instant, but Madame Alta's.

"I can't get used to it--I'll never like it," she repeated, and rising
from her chair, as if the view of the portrait annoyed her, she went
over to the centre table to glance idly over the current fiction with
which Kemper occupied his leisure hours. Her eyes were still wandering
aimlessly over the titles of the books, when her attention was diverted
by the sound of Wilkins' voice, lowered discreetly to an apologetic
whisper; and immediately afterward she heard the softened soprano of a
woman, who insisted, apparently, upon leaving the elevator and crossing
the hall outside. The conversation with Wilkins had reached Gerty's ears
at the same instant, and she, too, sat now with her enquiring gaze bent
on the door, which opened presently to admit the ample person of Madame
Alta. At sight of them she showed no tremor of surprise, but stood
poised there, in an impressive stage entrance, upon the threshold,
presiding, as it were, over the situation with all