He was already a man with a profession, and meant that she should

become aware of it.

* * * * *

Later in the evening somebody told her what a personage he had

become, and she became even more deeply thrilled, impressed, and

tremulously desirous that he should seek her out again, not venturing

to seek him, not dreaming of encouraging him to notice her by glance

or attitude--not even knowing, as yet, how to do such things. She

thought he had already forgotten her existence.

But that this thin, freckled young thing with grey eyes ought to

learn how much of a man he was remained somewhere in the back of

Neeland's head; and when he heard his hostess say that somebody would

have to see Rue Carew home, he offered to do it. And presently went

over and asked the girl if he might--not too patronisingly.

In the cutter, under fur, with the moonlight electrically brilliant

and the world buried in white, she ventured to speak of his art,

timidly, as in the presence of the very great.

"Oh, yes," he said. "I studied in Paris. Wish I were back there. But

I've got to draw for magazines and illustrated papers; got to make a

living, you see. I teach at the Art League, too."

"How happy you must be in your career!" she said, devoutly meaning it,

knowing no better than to say it.

"It's a business," he corrected her, kindly.

"But--yes--but it is art, too."

"Oh, art!" he laughed. It was the fashion that year to shrug when art

was mentioned--reaction from too much gabble.

"We don't busy ourselves with art; we busy ourselves with business.

When they use my stuff I feel I'm getting on. You see," he admitted

with reluctant honesty, "I'm young at it yet--I haven't had very much

of my stuff in magazines yet."

After a silence, cursed by an instinctive truthfulness which always

spoiled any little plan to swagger: "I've had several--well, about a dozen pictures reproduced."

One picture accepted by any magazine would have awed her sufficiently.

The mere fact that he was an artist had been enough to impress her.

"Do you care for that sort of thing--drawing, painting, I mean?" he

inquired kindly.

She drew a quick breath, steadied her voice, and said she did.

"Perhaps you may turn out stuff yourself some day."

She scarcely knew how to take the word "stuff." Vaguely she surmised

it to be professional vernacular.

She admitted shyly that she cared for nothing so much as drawing, that

she longed for instruction, but that such a dream was hopeless.




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