With a quick hand, he drew the curtain. "Not yet; please--not until I am
ready."
"Oh!" she cried with a charming air of submitting to one whose wish is
law, "How mean of you! I know it is splendid! Are you satisfied? Is it
better than the other? Is it like me?"
"I am sure that it is much better than the other," he replied. "It is as
like you as I can make it."
"And is it as beautiful as the other?"
"It is beautiful--as you are beautiful," he answered.
"I shall tell them all about it, to-morrow night--even if I haven't seen
it. And so will Jim Rutlidge."
Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange spent that evening at the little house next
door. The next morning, the artist shut himself up in his studio. At lunch
time, he would not come out. Late in the afternoon, the novelist went,
again, to knock at the door.
The artist called in a voice that rang with triumph, "Come in, old man,
come in and help me celebrate."
Entering, Conrad Lagrange found him; sitting, pale and worn, before his
picture--his palette and brushes still in his hand.
And such a picture!
A moment, the novelist who knew--as few men know--the world that was
revealed with such fidelity in that face upon the canvas, looked; then,
with weird and wonderful oaths of delight, he caught the tired artist and
whirled him around the studio, in a triumphant dance.
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