ng out of the window.... Before I came to this curious
city I was never afraid to speak to anybody who attracted me.... And I'm
not now.... So if he does look at me----"

He did.

The faintest glimmer of a smile troubled her lips. She thought: "I _do_
wish he'd speak!"

There was a very becoming color in his face, partly because he was
experienced enough not to mistake her; partly from a sudden and complete
realization of her beauty.

"It's so odd," thought Aphrodite, "that attractive people consider it
dangerous to speak to one another. I don't see any danger.... I wonder
what he has in that square box beside him? It can't be a camera.... It
_can't_ be a folding easel! It simply _can't_ be that _he_ is an artist!
a man like that----"

"_Are_ you?" she asked quite involuntarily.

"What?" he replied, astonished, wheeling around.

"An--an artist. I can't believe it, and I don't wish to! You don't look
it, you know!"

For a moment he could scarcely realize that she had spoken; his keen
gaze dissected the face before him, the unembarrassed eyes, the oval
contour, the smooth, flawless loveliness of a child.

"Yes, I am an artist," he said, considering her curiously.

"I am sorry," she said, "no, not sorry--only unpleasantly surprised. You
see I am so tired of art--and I thought you looked so--so wholesome----"

He began to laugh--a modulated laugh--rather infectious, too, for
Aphrodite bit her lip, then smiled, not exactly understanding it all.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked, still smiling. "Have I said something I
should not have said?"

But he replied with a question: "Have you found art unwholesome?"

"I--I don't know," she answered with a little sigh; "I am so tired of it
all. Don't let us talk about it--will you?"

"It isn't often I talk about it," he said, laughing again.

"Oh! That is unusual. Why don't you talk about art?"

"I'm much too busy."

"D--doing what? If that is not _very_ impertinent."

"Oh, making pictures of things," he said, intensely amused.

"Pictures? You don't talk about art, and you paint pictures!"

"Yes."

"W--what kind? Do you mind my asking? You are so--so very unusual."

"Well, to earn my living, I make full-page pictures for magazines; to
satisfy an absurd desire, I paint people--things--anything that might
satisfy my color senses." He shrugged his shoulders gaily. "You see, I'm
the sort you are so tired of----"

"But you _paint_! The artists I know don't paint--