the wrongs that
can come to models.

It was a superstitious little band over in the den. They talked often of
Gaunt. "He's got pictures in his eyes," said Wrinkles. They had expected
genius to blindly stumble at the perface and ceremonies of the world,
and each new flounder by Gaunt made a stir in the den. It awed them, and
they waited.

At last one morning Gaunt burst into the room. They were all as dead
men.

"I'm going to paint a picture." The mist in his eyes was pierced by a
Coverian gleam. His gestures were wild and extravagant. Grief stretched
out smoking on the bed, Wrinkles and little Pennoyer working at their
drawing-boards tilted against the table--were suddenly frozen. If bronze
statues had come and danced heavily before them, they could not have
been thrilled further.

Gaunt tried to tell them of something, but it became knotted in his
throat, and then suddenly he dashed out again.

Later they went earnestly over to Gaunt's studio. Perhaps he would tell
them of what he saw across the sea.

He lay dead upon the floor. There was a little grey mist before his
eyes.

When they finally arrived home that night they took a long time to
undress for bed, and then came the moment when they waited for some one
to put out the gas. Grief said at last, with the air of a man whose
brain is desperately driven: "I wonder--I--what do you suppose he was
going to paint?"

Wrinkles reached and turned out the gas, and from the sudden profound
darkness, he said: "There is a mistake. He couldn't have had pictures in
his eyes."

A STREET SCENE IN NEW YORK.

The man and the boy conversed in Italian, mumbling the soft syllables
and making little, quick egotistical gestures. Suddenly the man glared
and wavered on his limbs for a moment as if some blinding light had
flashed before his vision; then he swayed like a drunken man and fell.
The boy grasped his arm convulsively, and made an attempt to support his
companion so that the body slid to the side-walk with an easy motion
like a corpse sinking into the sea. The boy screamed.

Instantly people from all directions turned their gaze upon that figure
prone upon the side-walk. In a moment there was a dodging, peering,
pushing crowd about the man. A volley of questions, replies,
speculations flew to and fro among all the bobbing heads.

"What's th' matter? what's th' matter?"

"Oh, a jag, I guess!"

"Aw, he's got a fit!"

"What's th' matter? what's th' matter