ou stop painting and putting in the best
that's in you, then you'll go back. That's the reason I wanted this
picture, but I'm willing to wait and see the other. Let me know when
it's finished. Glad to have met you, Mr. Cole. Thank you for showing me
the pictures, Mr. McGrath. Must run downtown now. Hope to see you again
soon."

He walked off, sturdily, Gordon accompanying him to the door while I sat
down in front of the picture.

Ay, Lorimer was a mighty good judge; of that there could be no doubt. He
had at once appreciated the powerful rendering, the subtle treatment,
the beauty that radiated from the canvas, grippingly.

But I could only see Frances, the woman beautiful, who, unlike most
others, has a soul to illumine her comeliness. I filled my eyes with
her perfection of form, tall, straight and slender, with all the grace
that is hers and which Gordon's picture has taught me to see more
clearly. I felt as if a whiff of scented breeze came to me, wafted
through the glinting masses of her hair. The eyes bent upon the
slumbering child, I felt, might at any moment be lifted to her friend
Dave, the scribbler, who, for the first time in his life, was beginning
to learn that a woman's loveliness may be beyond the power of a poet's
imagining or even the wondrous gift of a painter. The scales had indeed
fallen from my eyes! At first I had thought that Gordon had idealized
her, mingling his fancy with the truth and succeeding in gilding the
lily. But now, I knew that all his art had but limned some of the tints
of her sunshot hair and traced a few points of her beauty.

I did not wonder that he was eager to try again. Wonderful though his
painting was, the man's ambition was surging in him to excel his own
work and attain still greater heights. Could he possibly succeed?

"Well, what do you think of millionaires now that you have met one in
the flesh?" asked Gordon, returning.

"This one is pretty human, it seems to me, and pretty shrewd."

"You're not such a fool as you look, Dave," said my friend quietly, but
with the twinkle in his eyes that mitigates his words. "One moment I
could have clubbed him over the head, if I'd had at hand anything
heavier than a mahlstick, but I daresay he knew what he was talking
about. I'll have to work harder."

"You already toil as hard as a man can, and are doing some great stuff,"
I replied. "The trouble is that you keep altogether too busy. It might
be worth your while to rememb