mpt to read books upside down. Is it possible
that Gordon suffers from similar limitations and needs to muse and toil
and delve before he can bring out the art that is in him?

Only yesterday I saw in the paper that he led a cotillon at the Van
Rossums. Moreover, at the Winter Exhibition I had the shock of my life.
I hurried there to see again the "Mother and Child," instead of which I
found his signature on the portrait of a railroad president. The papers
spoke of it as a wonderful painting, and one of them reproduced it. I
freely acknowledge that it deserves all the encomiums lavished upon it,
for it is a bold and earnest piece of work. But he has never done
anything like the picture of Frances.

I met him there and looked at him, questioningly. He understood me at
once.

"I'll get half the financial big guns now," he told me coolly, and left
me to greet a millionaire's bride.

I am not so foolish as to think he can be in love with Frances, and I
doubt very much whether he is in love with any one else, in spite of the
gossip that has reached me. No, he must simply be thinking of some great
composition with which he expects, in his own good time, to take the
world by storm. And yet, what if I should be mistaken? The mere idea
makes me feel very cold and uncomfortable, for no reason that I know of.

When he finally took his leave, he thanked Frieda for playing to us, and
said good-by to Frances as perfunctorily as he does everything else. We
began to clean up the teacups, and Frieda folded the frivolous little
tablecloth she has contributed to my outfit and put it away, while
Frances and I quarreled.

"I am not going," she said firmly.

"You are utterly mistaken," I insisted, "and you're a bold, mad,
rebellious creature. You will go at once and put on your best hat, and
your cloak, and dab powder on your nose, if it will make you happy, and
come along like a good child."

"But what is the use of my paying board to Mrs. Milliken and then having
you spend money for dinners at restaurants?" she objected.

"The use is obvious. It affords us the joy of permitting ourselves, once
in a blue moon, to behave like spendthrifts; it allows us to indulge in
the company of the young and ambitious, as well as of the old and
foolish. Moreover, an occasional change of diet was recommended by
Hippocrates. Who are you to rebel against the most ancient and
respectable medical authority, pray?"

"It is utterly wrong," she persis