"And then," said Barbara, "you, being young and foolish, lost your money."

"Oh, no!" he exclaimed. "I was a very bad little boy, but much too ambitious to be foolish. And you know you can't get very far in this world without money."

"Still," said Barbara, "a hand-organ and a tin cup?"

"A loiterer in the streets of New York," the beggar explained, "picks up knowledge not to be had in any other way. Knowledge is power."

"Then you don't have to beg, don't have to pose, don't have to do anything you don't want to do?"

"Oh, yes, I do. I have to crawl while others walk. I have to wait and procrastinate, where another might rush in and dare."

Again that first expression of Satan fallen overpowered the casual ease and even levity of his face. But he shifted his eyes lest Barbara see into them and be frightened by that which smouldered in their stony depths.

Without a word, Barbara stepped eagerly forward to the rough model that she had made of his head, and once more attacked her inspiration with eager hands. The beggar held himself motionless like a thing of stone, only his eyes roved a little, drinking in, you may say, that white loveliness which was Barbara at such moments as her own eyes were upon her work, and turning swiftly away when she lifted them in scrutiny of him. Now and then she made measurements of him with a pair of compasses. At such times it seemed to him that her nearness was more than his unschooled passions could bear with any appearance of apathy. Though a child of the nineteenth century, he had been enabled for many years to give way, almost whenever he pleased, to the instincts of primitive man, which, except for the greater frequency of their occurrence, differ in no essential way from the instincts of wild beasts.

Had she been a girl of the East Side he would not have hesitated upon the present occasion or in the present surroundings. But she was a girl of wealth and high position. It was not enough that his hands could stifle an outcry, or that the policeman upon the nearest beat was more in his own employ than in that of the city. Cold reason showed him that in the present case impunity was for once doubtful.

Her hands dropped from their work to her sides.

"How goes it?" asked the beggar.

"If it goes as it's gone," she said—"if it only does!"

"It will," said the beggar, and there was a strong vibration of faith and encouragement in his voice. "May I look?"

"Of course."

He came down from the platform, and she could not but admire the almost superhuman facility with which he moved upon his crutches. Halting at ease, before the beginning which she had made, he remained for a long time silent. Then, turning to her, he freed his right hand from the cross-piece of his crutch, and lifted it to his forehead in a sort of salute.

"Master!" he said.

The blood in Barbara's veins tingled with pleasure. He had thrown into his strong, rich voice an added wealth of sincerity, and she knew, or thought she knew, that at last the work of her hands had moved another, who, whatever else he might have been, was by his own showing no fool, but a man having in him much that was extraordinary. And she felt a sudden friendliness for the legless beggar.

His eyes still upon the clay—knowing, considering, measuring, appraising eyes—he said shortly and with decision: "We must go on with this."

"To-morrow—could you come to-morrow at the same time?"

"I will," he said.

"Good. Are you hungry?"

But the legless man did not appear to have heard her. A sound in the adjoining room had arrested his attention. He listened to it critically and then smiled.

"A good workman," he said, "is turning a screw into wood."

"How clever of you," said Barbara. "There was a man coming from Schlemmer's to put on some glass knobs for me. Bubbles has brought him in by the back stairs."

The faint crunching sound of the screw going into the wood ceased. There was a knock on the door.

"Come in," said Barbara.

Bubbles appeared in the opening. "We're all through in here."

It did not at once strike Barbara that to have finished his work in the next room the man from Schlemmer's must have arrived upon the scene very much earlier than he had promised. And she could not by any possibility have guessed that Bubbles, in a state of nervous alarm, had slipped down the back stairs and run all the way to the hardware store to fetch him.

"He may as well begin in here, then," she said; "I'm through for this morning." And she turned to the beggar. "To-morrow—at the same time?"

He nodded briefly, but did not at once turn to go. He wished, it seemed, to have a good look at the young workman who now followed Bubbles into the studio. And so did Barbara, the moment she saw him.

To her critical eye he was quite the best-looking young man she had ever seen "in the world or out of it." He was tall, broad, round-necked, narrow in the hips, and of a fine brown coloring. He carried with easy grace a strong, well-massed head, to which the close adherence of the ears, and the shortness of the dark-brown shiny hair, gave an effect of high civilization and finish. Brown, level eyes, neither hard nor soft, but of a twinkling habit, a nose straight, thick, finely chiselled, an emphatic chin, and a large mouth of extraordinary sweetness, were not lost upon Barbara, but that which served most to arrest her attention was that resemblance which she at once perceived to exist between the young workman and the legless beggar. Yet between Bubbles, who also resembled Blizzard in her eyes or in her imagination, and the youth from the hardware store, she was unable, swiftly comparing them, to find anything in common. To the one nature had denied even full growth and development; upon the other she had lavished muscle, blood, and bone. The small boy had a ragged, peaked, pathetic face, hair that sprouted every which way, the eyes of an invalid, ears of unequal size and different shapes, that stuck straight out from his head—all the stampings, in short, of street-birth and gutter-raising. The workman had an efficient, commanding look, the easy, strong motions of an athlete trained and proved. Neither in the least resembled the other, yet both resembled the legless beggar, who in turn resembled Satan after the fall—and Barbara was inclined to laugh.

"I am so obsessed with one man's face," she thought, "that I see something of it in all other faces."

"Good-morning, Harry." It was the beggar's voice, cool, and perhaps a little insolent.

"Good-morning, Blizzard." The young man nodded curtly and turned to Barbara. "Do you wish all the knobs changed?"

"Please."

Without another word, the young man knelt at the door by which he had entered and began with the aid of a long screw-driver to remove its ancient lock of japanned iron and coarse white china.

"What's the best news with you, Harry?"

The young man did not look up from his work. "That the water'll soon be warm enough for swimming," he said.

To Barbara that answer seemed pleasantly indicative of a healthy nature and a healthy mind.

"It's a curious thing," observed the beggar, "how many more people drown themselves when the water is nice and warm than when it is cold and inhospitable. And yet it's in the cold months that the most people receive visits from despair."

Bubbles looked up, wondering. In his experience the legless beggar had no manner of language different from that of the streets to which he belonged. But now he spoke as Miss Barbara spoke, only, perhaps we may be permitted so to express it, very much more so.

Barbara turned to the beggar. "I haven't paid you."

But he retreated in smiling protest, picked up his hand-organ, and slung it across his shoulders. "The door, Bubbles."

Bubbles sprang to let the beggar out.

"To-morrow," said Barbara, "at the same time. Good-by, and thank you."

"Good-by, and thank you," said Blizzard.

Bubbles followed him to the head of the stairs and watched, not without admiration, the astounding ease of the legless one's rapid descent.

Harry, the workman, having disengaged the old japanned lock from the door, rose to his feet, and turned to Barbara with a certain quiet eagerness. "Look here," he said, "it's none of my business, but I know, and you don't. That man," he waved the screw-driver toward the door by which Blizzard had departed, "is poison. There's nothing he'd stop at. Nothing."

"Quite so," said Barbara coldly; "and, as you say, it's hardly anybody's affair but mine."

The workman was good-nature personified. "If you must go on with him," he said, "haven't you a big brother or somebody with nothing better to do than drop in, and," his eyes sought the clay head of Blizzard, "watch the good work go on?" He stepped closer to the head, and examined it with real interest. "It is good work," he said; "it's splendid."

Barbara was mollified. "What," she said, "is so very wrong about poor Mr. Blizzard?"

"Oh," said the young man, "we know a great deal about him, and we are trying very hard to gather the proofs."

"We?"

"I'm a very little wheel in the machinery of the secret service."

"I knew," said Barbara, "the moment I saw you that you weren't only a locksmith or a carpenter. Does Mr. Blizzard know what you are?"

"He can't prove it, unless you tell him."

"I sha'n't do that."

"How often will he have to pose for you?"

"Heaven only knows. But I think"—and she looked the young man in the face, and smiled, for his face had charmed her—"I think that if ever I finish with Mr. Blizzard, I shall ask you to be my next model."

The admiration with which the young man regarded Barbara was no less frankly and openly expressed than was hers for him. "Until this moment," he said, "I have never understood the eager desire which some people have to sit for their portraits. Whenever you say."

She laughed. "And the new door-knobs?"

"Just because a man belongs to the secret service," returned the youth, "is no reason why he shouldn't attempt once in a while to do something really useful."

And he knelt once more and took up his work where he had left off. Barbara stood by and watched him at it. "I would like to do his hands, too," she thought, "when I can get round to it." They were very strong, square, able hands. She found herself wishing to touch them. And since this was a wish that she had never experienced for any other pair of hands, she wondered at herself with a frank and childish wonder.

"Your taxi, Miss Barbara."

"Thank you, Bubbles."

She slipped out of her overall, and with swift touches adjusted her hat at a small mirror. The secret-service agent once more rose from his knees.

"Good-by," said Barbara, "and thank you, and don't forget."

"Never," said he.

She shook hands with him, and his firm strong clasp, literally swallowing her own little hand, was immensely pleasant to her and of a fine friendliness.

"Good-by, Bubbles. See you in the morning."

"Good-by, Miss Barbara."

She was gone. The man resumed his work. The boy watched.

"Harry."

"What?"

"Was I right?"

"Right."



"A wonder—or not?"

"A wonder."

"Harry."

"What?"

"You won't leave Blizzard up to me all alone, will you? Not now, you won't?"

"No, Bubbles, not now. Whenever he's posing in this room, you and I won't be far off."

"Because," said Bubbles, smiling with relief, "I'd do my best, but if it came to a show-down with him there ain't a thing I could do."

"One time or another," said Harry, "we'll get him. You and I will."

"I betcher," said Bubbles.

And in his little peaked face there was much that was threatening to the ultimate welfare of the legless beggar.



X

Barbara, ordinarily clear-minded and single-minded, drove uptown with her thoughts in a state of chaos. She wished to think only about her newly begun head of Satan fallen, since nothing else seemed to her at the moment of any importance, but the face, hands, and voice of the young secret-service agent refused to be banished, and kept suing for kindly notice.

In almost the exact degree in which the legless beggar was repulsive to her sense of perfection the secret-service agent was attractive. She had never seen a man so agreeable to her eyes. And yet, as a marine artist might see fame in painting a wreck upon a sea-shore, rather than a fine new ship under full sail, so she felt that, artistically considered, there was no comparison whatever between the two men. The face of the elder compelled attention and study, and loosed in the observer's mind a whole stream of conjecture and unanswerable questions. The face of the younger began and ended perhaps in the attractions of youth and high spirits. It was a face of which, should the mind back of it prove wanting, you might tire, and learn to look upon as commonplace.

In the midst of unguided thinking Barbara laughed aloud; that small boy whom she had lifted from the cold gutter to comparative affluence and incomparable affection for his rescuer came unbidden into the flurry-scurry of her thoughts, and remained for some time. And she knew that if all her friends should fail her, if the beggar returned no more to be modelled, if the secret-service agent proved but a handsome empty shell, Bubbles would always show up at the appointed time and place while life remained in him. Then, again, as she tried to concentrate upon her bust of Blizzard, the secret-service agent stepped forward, you may say, and smiled into her eyes. And she smiled back. Again she seemed to feel the strong clasp of his hand, and to hear the agreeable and even musical intonation of his strong voice. Odd, she thought, that he should come to put on door-knobs, turn out to be a secret-service agent, and have at the same time, if not the characteristics of a fine gentleman, those at least of a man of education and sensibility infinitely superior to the highest type of day-laborer or detective. One of her new acquaintances talked like a gentleman and claimed to be the son of a distinguished man; the other, claiming nothing, was infinitely more presentable; and there was only the small boy who remained frankly representative of his class. In spite of his coat of bright buttons, he was of the streets streety; a valiant little ragamuffin, in all but the actual rags. He had the morals of his class and the point of view, and differed only in the excellence of his heart. This was a heart made for loving, devotion, and sacrifice. Yet it was crammed to the brim with knowledge of evil, and even tolerance therefor. That certain men in certain circumstances would act in such and such a way was not a horrible idea to Bubbles, but merely a fact. In the boy's code stealing from a friend was stealing, but stealing from an enemy was merely one way of making a living.

Upon arriving at her father's house, Barbara met Wilmot Allen just turning away from the door. His handsome face brightened at the sight of her, and he sprang forward hatless to furnish her with quite unnecessary aid in stepping out of the taxi.

"Oh, there you are!" he said. "Sparker said you might be home for lunch and again you might not. Please may I graft a meal?"

"Of course," said Barbara, "but unless somebody else drops out of the skies we'll be all alone."

"Your father off on a case?"

"Yes," said Barbara, as they went in, "he is operating, but in Wall Street. And what's the best news with you?"

"That spring's come and summer's coming. When do your holidays begin?"

"That" said Barbara, with a certain air of triumph, "is a secret of the workshop. Let's sit in the dining-room. It's the only way to hurry lunch."

To persons used to humbler ways of life Dr. Ferris's dining-room would have proved too large and stately a place for purposes of intimate conversation. Warriors and ladies looked down from the tapestried walls upon a small round table set with heavy silver and light glass for two, and having the effect, in the midst of an immense deep-blue rug, of a little island in a lake. But Barbara and Wilmot Allen, well used to even larger and more stately rooms, faced each other across the white linen with its pattern of lotus-plants and swans, and chatted as comfortably and unconcernedly as two children in their nursery.

"As for holidays," said Barbara, "I have a new model, Wilmot; a wonderful person, and that means work. I may stay in town right through the summer."

Allen sighed loudly, and on purpose. "You make me tired," he said. "Bring a lump of clay down to Newport, and I'll sit for you."

Barbara affected to study his face critically. Then she shook her head. "My new model," she explained, "has got the face of a fallen angel. I think I can do it. And if I can do it, why, I see all the good things of sculping coming my way."

"An ordinary every-day angel face wouldn't do?" her guest insinuated. "I could go out and fall."

"I don't doubt it!" she returned somewhat crisply. "I feel very sure that you could disgrace yourself without trouble and even with relish. But it wouldn't show in your face. You see, you couldn't really be wicked."

"Couldn't I though!" exclaimed the young man. "A lot you know about it. I could eat you up for one thing without turning a hair, and that would be wicked."

"It wouldn't," Barbara laughed. "It would be greedy. My new model has the face of a man who has never stopped at anything that has stood in his way. I fancy that he has murders up his sleeve and every other crime in the calendar. And sometimes memory of them brings the most wonderful look of sorrow and remorse into his face, and at the same time he looks resolved to go on murdering and burning and sinning because he can't get back to where he was when he began to fall, and must go on falling or perish. Don't you think that if I can cram that into a lump of clay I'll make a reputation for myself?"

"I think," said Wilmot, "that if you've got that kind of a man sitting for you, you'll need all the reputation you can get. You talk of him with the same sort of enthusiasm that a bird would show in describing being fascinated by a snake."

Barbara considered this judicially. "Do you know," she agreed, "it is rather like that. He fascinates me, and at the same time I never saw a brute I hated so. He must be wicked to deserve such pain."

"Oh, he suffers, does he?"

"Of course. Wouldn't you suffer every minute of your life if you had no legs?"

Barbara, intent upon what was on her plate, did not perceive the sudden astonished darkening of Wilmot Allen's face, nor that the interest which he had hitherto only feigned in her new model had become genuine.

"What is he?"

"I was going to say 'just a beggar,'" said Barbara. "But he isn't just a beggar. I've gathered that he's rather well off, and that he's one of the powers on the East Side. And he looks money and power, even if he doesn't talk them."

"Is his name by any chance Blizzard?"

She looked up in astonishment "How did you know?"

"Oh," he said cheerfully, "I've knocked about the city and known all sorts of curious people, and heard about others. So Blizzard's your new model. Now look here, Barbara, are we old friends, or aren't we?"

"Very old friends," she said.

"Then let me tell you that you're a little fool to have anything to do with a man like that. You can't touch pitch, you know, and—"

"I only touch him with a pair of compasses," she interrupted sweetly.

"Don't quibble," said Allen with energy; "it's not like you. That man is so bad, so unsavory, so vile, that you simply mustn't have him about. He's dangerous."

"So is a volcano," said Barbara, "but there's no reason why the most innocent bread-and-butter miss shouldn't paint a picture of a volcano if she felt inspired."

"I see that there's only one thing to do. I shall tell your father."

Wilmot Allen was genuinely troubled. And Barbara laughed at him.

"I'm not a child," she said.

"That's just it," said he; "that's why you ought to be ashamed of yourself. And anyway you are a child. All girls say they aren't until they get into a mess of some sort, and then they excuse themselves to themselves and everybody else by protesting that they were. 'I was so young. I didn't know,' and all that rot."

"Blizzard," said Barbara, "is quiet, polite, and a good talker. He comes, he sits for me, and he goes away."

The butler having left the room, Wilmot fixed his rather tired eyes on Barbara's face, and spoke with a certain earnest tenderness. "Barbs," he said, "take it from me, happiness doesn't lie where you think it does. I think the very highest achievements of the very greatest artists haven't brought happiness. Look here, old dear; put a limit to your ambition. Say that by a certain date you'll either succeed and quit, or fail and quit, and then see if you can't take a little more interest in your own people, in your own heart—even in me."

"Wilmot," she said seriously, "if I fail with my head of Blizzard, I think I shall give up."

"Wouldn't it be better," he pleaded, "to give up now? And then, you know, you could always say if only you'd kept on you would have made a masterpiece."

"And who would believe that?"

"I!" said Wilmot. "It's easy for me to believe anything wonderful of you. It always has been."

"And a moment ago," she smiled, "you called me a little fool and said you'd tell my father on me."

She rose, still smiling, and he followed her into the library.

"Are all the studios in your building occupied?" he asked.

"They are," said Barbara, "and they aren't. Kelting, who has the ground floor, has gone abroad. And Updyke, who has the third floor, has been in Bermuda all winter." She sank into a deep leather chair that half swallowed her.

"There's a janitor?"

"No. There's a janitress, a friendly old lady, quite deaf. She has seen infinitely better days."

"To all intents and purposes, then," said Wilmot, and the trouble that he felt showed in his face, "it's an empty house, and you shut yourself up in it with some model or other that you happen to pick up in the streets, and you don't know enough to be afraid. You'll get yourself murdered one of these bright mornings."

"Oh, I think not!" said Barbara. "There's Bubbles, you know."

"Oh, Bubbles!" exclaimed Wilmot. "He doesn't weigh eighty pounds. This Blizzard—look here, get rid of him. I can't tell you what the man is." He laughed. "I don't know you well enough. But take my word for it, if a crime appeals to him, he commits it. And the police can't touch him, Barbs."

"Why can't they?"

"He knows too much about them individually and collectively. They're afraid of him. Get rid of him, Barbs."

Wilmot Allen's voice was strongly appealing. The fact that he sat forward in his chair, instead of yielding to its deep and enjoyable embrace, proved that he was very much in earnest. But Barbara shook her lovely head.

"You ask too much, Wilmot. My heart's in the beginning I've made. I've got to go on. It's a test case. If I've got anything in me, now is the chance for it to show. You see, when I made up my mind seriously to try to do worth-while things with my own hands, everybody was against me. And the sympathy that I am going to receive if I fail to make good is of a kind that's almost impossible to face."

"Then do me a favor. It won't interfere with your work, and it may be very useful at a pinch." He drew from his hip pocket a small automatic pistol. "Accept this," he went on, "and keep it somewhere handy as a sort of guardian. It's much stronger than the strongest man."

"How absurd!" she said. "And what are you doing carrying concealed weapons? I'm beginning to think that you're a desperado yourself."

He rose, smiling imperturbably, and laid the pistol in her lap.

"At least," she said, "show me how it works."

He explained the mechanism clearly and with patience, not once, but several times. "Point it," he said, "as you would point your finger, and keep pulling the trigger until the enemy drops."

"One every two hours," Barbara commented, "until relieved."

"May you never need it," said Wilmot, earnestly.

"I never shall," said Barbara. "Must I really keep it?"

"Yes."

"But you," she exclaimed, "you will be quite unprotected all the way from here to the nearest shop where such things are sold."

"I shall be armed again," he smiled, "before I am threatened. Indeed, to know that you are armed has heartened me immensely. What are you doing this afternoon?"

"I don't know," she answered with provoking submissiveness; "you haven't told me."

"It's just possible," he said, "that the turf courts at the Westchester Country Club have been opened. I might telephone and find out. Then we could collect some clothes, jump into a taxi, and go out and open the season."

"You can't afford taxis, Wilmot. And you never let anybody else pay for anything."

"Oh," he pleaded, "I can afford a taxi this once, believe me."

"In that case," said Barbara, "I surrender."

"If you only would, Barbs."

"'Phone if you are going to, and don't be always slipping sentiment into a business proposition," She affected to look very stern and business-like.

"I shall engage the magic taxi," he affirmed.

"The what?"

"Don't you know? There's a magic taxi in the city—just one. You get in, you give your order, and lo and behold, rivers and seas are crossed, countries and continents, until finally you fetch up in the place where you would be, and when you look at the meter you find that it hasn't registered as much as a penny."

"Time," said Barbara, "flies even faster than a magic taxicab. So if you are going to 'phone—"

"Is there no drop of sentiment in that exquisite shell which the world knows as Barbara Ferris? Didn't any man ever mean anything to you, Barbs?"

She flushed slightly, for there had come into her thoughts quite unbidden the image of a certain young man in workman's clothes, kneeling at a door, and removing an old japanned iron lock. She shook her head firmly, and smiled up at him insultingly.

"Men, Wilmot," she said, "are nothing to me but planes, angles, curves, masses, lights, and shadows. They are either suited to sculpture or they aren't."

Wilmot laughed, and while he was busy with the telephone, Barbara tried to think of the secret-service agent in cold terms of planes, curves, masses, etc., and found that she couldn't. Which discovery annoyed and perplexed her.



XI

The girls who plaited hats for Blizzard had just finished luncheon and were taking their places at the long work-table. The entrance door having clanged its bell, twenty heads bent earnestly over twenty hats in various stages of construction, and twenty pairs of hands leaped into skilful activity.

The master passed up and down on his crutches, observing progress and despatch with slow-moving, introspective eyes. Presently he came to a halt and clapped his hands sharply together. Twenty pairs of eyes, some cringing, some with vestiges of boldness, some favor-currying, sought his, and twenty pairs of hands ceased work as when power is shut off from as many machines. Blizzard's eyes passed slowly over the girls in a sort of appraising review, once, and a second time.

"Miss Rose."

"Yes, sir."

The speaker was one of those flowers of girlhood which bloom here and there in the slums. She might have been a princess in exile and disguise. Even her hands and feet were fine and delicate. And if in her expression there was a certain nervousness, there was none of fear.

"Stand up."

She rose in her place; the corners of her mouth trembled a little, but curled steadily upward.

"Stand out where I can see you."

She did so, with a certain defiant grace.

"Turn around, slowly."

She might have been one of those young ladies at a fashionable dressmaker's upon whom the effect of the latest Parisian models is continually tried. While she slowly gyrated, the legless man, looking up at her, spoke aloud.

"Muck! Muck!" he said. "And yet she's the pick of the bunch."

The girl kept on turning,

"Stand still."

She did as ordered, but it so happened that her back was squarely turned upon the master.

"No monkey business," he shouted. "Face me! Face me!"

She faced him, still scornful, but white now, and biting her lips.

"The rest of you," he said, "will have the rest of the day off. Get out."

Seventy-six chair-legs squeaked, and Miss Rose's nineteen companions, with murmurs and occasional nervous giggles, hurried off to the coat-room. A few minutes later the bell of the outer door clanged once—they were going; clanged a second time—they were gone.



Meanwhile the legless man had not taken his hard, calculating eyes off the girl who remained. Presently he spoke. "We're alone," he said. "I'm between you and the door." He spread his great arms, as if to emphasize the impassability of the barrier which confronted her. "Are you afraid?"

"Yes."

The legless man laughed. "Well said," he remarked, "and truthfully said. And why are you afraid?"

"Everybody's afraid of you."

He regarded her for some moments in silence. "You needn't be. Have I ever hurt you?"

"No."

"How long have you worked for me?"

"Five months."

"And you are the cleverest worker I have. You admit that?"

"I don't know."

Again he laughed. "Once," he said, "I thought you were the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. But I've seen a prettier."

"I believe you."

"'But you've got a certain spirit. You don't cringe."

"Don't I?"

"No!" he bellowed, "you don't." And when he saw that she didn't cringe, he laughed once more.

"You live with Minnie Bauer?"

"Yes, sir."

"You have no father—no mother?"

"No, sir."

"Burnt alive in a tenement fire, weren't they?"

She answered with a great effort, and seemed upon the verge of tears, "Yes, sir."

"You will leave Minnie, and come here to live."

"Why?"

"Because I make it my business to reward the skilful, the laborious, and the deserving."

She shook her head. "That's not good enough," she said.

"You will keep my house in order," he said; "you will learn to help me with the piano. You will have fine clothes to wear, and the spending of plenty of money."

"Not good enough," she repeated.

"I have read you these five months as if you were a book. You are loyal to your friends. You can keep secrets. I admire you. There are many things that I wish to talk about. But I cannot talk about them except to some one that I can trust. Will you stay?"

She shook her head, but the legless man smiled, as he might have smiled if she had nodded it.

"I am suffering," he said, "the tortures of the damned. I ask you for help and for comfort, and you refuse them."

A look curiously like tenderness swam into the girl's eyes. The beggar moved sideways upon his crutches.

"If you want to go," he said, "the way's open."

"Can I really go if I want to, and not come back?"

"You really can," he said. "Most things that I want I take, but a man can't take help and comfort unless they are freely given."

She moved slowly forward as if to discover the truth of his statement that the way was open. He made not the least gesture of interference. When she was between him and the outer door and rather nearer the latter, she turned about sharply.

"What's troubling you?" she asked.

"The fact," he said, and there was a something really charming in the expression of his mouth and eyes, "that though I can give orders to very many people, and be obeyed as a general is obeyed by his soldiers in war times, I have no friend. Fear attracts this person to me, self-interest attracts that person, but there's no one that's held to me by friendship."

"You're only asking me to be your friend?"

"You will be as safe in my house as in the rooms of the Gerry Society."

"If you want me for a friend why did you call me muck just now?"

"I don't want the others to know that we are friends. I want them to think—what they always think."

"How do I know you trust me?"

"Lock the street door," he said; "you're younger than I. It's easier for you to move about."

She locked the door and returned.

"Are you staying," he asked, "through curiosity or friendship?"

"Look here," she said, "it's neither, Can't you guess what ails me?"

"Tell me."

She took his strong, wicked face between her young hands, and bending over kissed him on the forehead. Then she drew back, flaming.

The legless man was touched. "Why?" he asked.

"I don't know. It just came to me," she said. "God knows I didn't want it to. I guess that's all"

Rose found it hard to control her jumping nerves. A curious thing had happened to her. Having at last wormed her way into the master's confidence, and brought a long piece of play-acting to a successful conclusion, a certain candor and frankness which were natural to her made the thought of divulging what she had already found out, and whatever he might confide to her in the future, exceedingly repugnant. And she acknowledged with a shiver of revolt that the creature's fascination for her was not altogether a matter of make-believe. She was going to find it very hard to keep a proper perspective and point of view; to continue to regard him as just another "case" and all in the day's work.

"In my house," he said, "you shall do as you please. You're a dear girl, Rose,"

"I feel at home in your house," she said, "and happy."

A cloud gathered in Blizzard's face. "Happiness!" he exclaimed. "There is no such thing—neither for you, nor for me. The world is a torture-chamber, and remember, Rose, we are to be allies; we are to have no secrets from each other."

She shrugged her shoulders. "That was what you said," she complained. "But have you really shown me any confidence?"

He smiled as upon a wayward child. "You shall know everything that there is to know—when the time comes."

She pouted.

"And what, by the way," he went on, "have you told me?"

"I have told you," she answered with dignity, "my one secret."

"The way you feel about me?"

She nodded and blushed. It was going to be a hard lie to keep telling.

"And you've no other secret? Nothing else that you ought to tell me?"

There was more meaning in his voice than in his words, so that for a moment Rose was startled. Was it possible that the man suspected her, and was playing with her as a cat plays with a mouse?

"What else could I possibly have to tell you of any importance?"

"I was joking," said the beggar.

Rose sat at the window of her room looking upward into a night of stars. She could not sleep. Twice she had heard the legless man pass her door upon his crutches. Each time he had hesitated, and once, or so she thought, he had laid his hand upon the door-knob. She wondered how much of her wakefulness was due to fright; and how much to the excitement of being well launched upon a case of tremendous importance, for the secret service knew that Blizzard was engaged upon a colossal plot of some sort, and just what that was Rose had volunteered, at the risk of her life, and of her honor, to find out.



XII

The next morning, at the appointed hour, Blizzard climbed the stairs to Barbara's studio, knocked, and was admitted. That he was welcome, if only for his head's sake, was at once evident.

"Something told me that you wouldn't fail me," said Barbara.

"You can be quite easy about that," said Blizzard. "I am in the habit of keeping my word."

He climbed to the model's platform and seated himself as upon the previous morning, with a kind of business-like directness.

"Ready when you are," he said.

Barbara withdrew the damp cloths from the clay, looked critically from the bust to the original and back again. "My work," she said, "still looks right to me. But you don't."

Blizzard smiled.

"Yesterday," she said, "you looked as if you were suffering like," she laughed, "like the very devil. To-day you look well fed and contented. Now that won't do. Try to remember what you were thinking about when I first saw you."

At once, as a fresh slide is placed in a magic-lantern, the legless man's expression of well-being vanished, and that dark tortured look of Satan fallen which had so fired Barbara's imagination, once more possessed his features. Barbara's eyes flashed with satisfaction.

"It wasn't hard for you to remember what you were thinking about, was it?" she said.

"It was not," said Blizzard, and his voice was cold as a well-curb. "When I first saw you, I was thinking thoughts that can never be forgotten."

"Lift your chin, please," she said, "just a fraction. So. Turn your head a fraction more toward me. Good. And please don't think of anything pleasant until I tell you. Anybody can make an exact copy of a head. Expressions are the things that only lucky people can catch."

"I believe you are one of them," said Blizzard. "I believe you will catch mine—if you keep on wanting to."

"I must," she said simply.

And then for half an hour there was no sound in the studio but the long-drawn breathing of the legless man. Barbara worked in a kind of grim, exalted silence.

Meanwhile Bubbles was climbing the back stair to his bedroom, where he had left Harry, the secret-service agent, on guard over Barbara. The boy, all out of breath with haste, opened his right fist and disclosed a narrow slip of paper with writing on it.

"The minute he came out of his burrow and started uptown," said Bubbles, "and was out o' sight, I begun to spin my top up and down Marrow Lane. Rose she's moved upstairs, like she said she would."

Harry's eyes sparkled with interest and approbation. "Good girl!" he said.

"I seen her," Bubbles went on, "at an upper window, and when she seed me, she winked both eyes, like as if the sun was too bright for 'em. I winked the same way, and then she lets the paper drop."

Harry took the paper out of the boy's hand, and read: "Nothing done, much doing."

"She's a grand one," said Bubbles. "If he ever gets wise to her, he'll tear her to pieces."

"I'm not worrying about Rose—yet," said Harry. "She knows what she's up against, and she can pull a gun quicker than I can. We used to play getting the drop on each other by the hour."

"What for?" asked Bubbles, always interested in the smallest details of sporting propositions.

"Poker-chips," said Harry, and Bubbles looked his disgust. There was a minute's silence, then:

"Harry," said Bubbles, "what do you think he's up to?"

"By George," said Harry, "I can't make out. What do you think?"

Bubbles's sensitive mouth quivered eagerly. "You tell me," he said, "what he's making hats for—he don't sell 'em—and I'll tell you what he's up to."

"Some of the labor leaders in the West are mixed up in it," said Harry; "we know that."

"Labor leaders, Harry!" The small boy's face was comic with scorn and facetiousness.

"You know the ones I mean, Bub. Not the men who lead labor—that's only what they call themselves; but the men who betray labor for their own pockets, the men who find dynamite for half-witted fanatics to set off. The men—" He broke short off, and listened. "Better butt in to the studio, Bub, and see what's doing,"

"Did you think you heard something?"

"I know that I haven't heard anything for half an hour."

In a few minutes Bubbles returned. "He's just sitting there with a hell of a face on him," he said, "and she's working like a dynamo."

And although Barbara actually was working with great speed and gratitude, the entrance of the small boy had seemed to disturb the train of her inspiration. Somewhere in the back of her head appeared to be some brain-cells quite detached from the important matter in hand, and to these was conveyed the fact that a door-knob had been turned, and at once they began to busy themselves upon the suggestion. Something like this: door-knobs—old door-knobs—new glass door-knobs—man to put on new glass door-knobs—wonderfully prepossessing man—name Harry—charming name. Harry—charming smile—wonder if anybody'll ever see him again.

Gradually other cells in Barbara's brain took up the business, until presently she was entirely occupied with unasked, and unwelcome, and altogether pleasant thoughts of the young secret-service agent. It was almost as if he laid his hand on her shoulder, and said: "You've worked long enough on this dreadful beggar—come with me for a holiday."

Twice, sternly, she endeavored to go on with her work, and could not. Something of the May-weather message, that all is futile except life, had filtered into her blood. Her hands dropped to her sides, and her face, very rosy, became so wonderfully beautiful that Blizzard almost groaned aloud. Something told him that his morning was over, his morning filled with the happiness of propinquity and stolen looks, with the happiness that is half spiritual and half gloating.

"Thank you," said Barbara, "ever so much. I sha'n't do any more to-day. I'm not fit. But we have gotten on. Want to look?"

She turned the revolving-table so that Blizzard could look upon his likeness. And you may be sure that he did not lose the opportunity thus presented. He regarded the clay steadily, for a long time, without speaking. Then he drew one very long breath, and the expression upon his face softened.

"That man," he said, "has had a hard life, Miss Ferris. It is all written in his face. When he was a little boy, he was the victim of a mistake so atrocious, so wicked, that the blood in his body turned to gall, and all his powers of loving turned to hatred. Instead of facing disaster like a man, he turned from it, and fled—down—down—down, and fell down—down—grappling with all that he could reach that was good or beautiful, and dragging it down with him—to destruction—to the pit—to hell on earth. And then he lived a long time, pampering all that was base in him, prospering materially, recognizing no moral law. He was contented with his choice—happy as a well-fed dog is happy in a warm corner. And then the inevitable happened. An idea came to him, a dream of peace and beauty, of well-doing and happiness. But that chance was torture, since, if he was to live it, he must undo the evil that he had done, unthink the thoughts that had been meat and drink to him, and he must get back to where he was before he fell."

He paused, and extending his right forefinger pointed at the bust of himself and exclaimed:

"That man—there—that you've made in my image—line for line—torture for torture, must go on living in the hell which he has prepared with his own perverted mind. He can never get back. It is too late—too late—too late!"

His voice rose to a kind of restrained fury. The room shook with its strong vibrations.

Then he turned to Barbara, smiled, all of a sudden, gayly, almost genuinely, and said in a voice of humble gallantry:

"But I've done you a good turn. If you never proved it before, you're proving these days that you are a heaven-born genius."

A harder-headed girl than Barbara must have been pleased and beguiled. She blushed, and laughed. "I've only one thing to wish for," she said.

"What is that?"

"I wish," she said, "that you were the greatest art critic in the world."

He leaned forward, and in a confidential whisper: "A secret," said he, "between us two. I am."

Then they both laughed, and the beggar, not without reluctance, climbed down from the platform. Swift and easy as were his motions, he appeared to terrible disadvantage, and he knew it. So did Barbara, who a moment before had been on the point of really liking him. She steeled herself against the sudden disgust which she could not help feeling, and smiled at him in a steady, friendly way.

"To-morrow?" she said.

"To-morrow."

"At the same time, please. Good-by, and good luck to you."

"Good luck to you, Miss Ferris." And he was gone.

Barbara, opening the door into the next room, surprised a sound of voices. They ceased instantly.

"Bubbles," she called.

He came, looking a trifle guilty.

"Who's that with you?"

"Harry," he said simply.

"The man who was here before?"

"Yes, Miss Barbara."

"What's he doing in my rooms?"

"He was just sitting, and chinning," said Bubbles.

Miss Ferris was displeased. "Tell him," she said, "that I can't have my apartment turned into a Young Men's Club."

"Yes, miss."

Bubbles retired, reluctantly, with the message, only to return in a moment.

"He says will you let him speak to you a moment, please."

She hesitated. And then, "Yes," she said. "I suppose he wishes to apologize."

He was even more charming-looking than the memory of him. She made an effort to look a little displeased, and a little unfriendly. She failed, because the May-weather message had gotten into her blood, and because certain forces of which as yet she knew little had established connecting links between herself and the young secret-service agent.

"I am going to scold you," said Barbara. "Bubbles has his work to do."

"But I was helping him with it."

"He said you were just sitting and—and chinning."

"When we had finished working."

"Have you been here long?"

The young man looked her steadily in the face, and said gravely: "Ever since Blizzard came."

Barbara lifted her chin a little. "I am quite able to take care of myself," she said.

He shook his head sadly.

"Do you make it your business"—she had succeeded in making herself angry—"to keep an eye on all young women whom you fancy unable to take care of themselves?"

"I only wish to God I could," he said earnestly. "But of course it's impossible. So I just do the best I can."

"And why have you chosen me? Surely others are even more helpless than I am." She managed to convey a good deal of scorn. "Why," she continued, "must I be the particular creature singled out for your chivalrous notice?"

"I don't know," he said simply.

All the anger went out of Barbara, and a delicious little thrill passed through her from head to foot, leaving in its wake a clear rosy coloring.

"Bubbles," said the young man, "would die for you; but he is only a little boy. I am very strong."

Barbara refused to rise at the implication that the strong young man was also ready and even eager to die for her. "Tell me more about Blizzard," she said.

"He's one of the half-dozen men in the city that we would like to have an eye on night and day. We want him."

"Oh," she said, "then you are not here entirely on my account? It is also your business to be here?"

He nodded, not altogether pleased with the turn the matter had taken.

"In that case," she said, "I have no wish to stand in your way. But—I don't propose to be a cat's-paw. You may sit in Bubbles's room if you like, but I won't have you on your hands and knees at the studio door listening at the key-hole. That must be understood."

The young man flushed with righteous anger. "You don't look" he said, "as if you could say a thing like that to a fellow."

Instantly, and almost humbly, she begged his pardon.

"Then I may come to-morrow?" he asked.

"And the next day," said Barbara. "And, by the way, what is your name?"

"Harry," he said.

"Harry what?"

A look very much like pathos came into his handsome eyes. "I want to be honest with you," he said. "I don't own any other name. I call myself West. But I've no right to it. I don't know who my father was or what he was."

"You don't have to explain," said Barbara. "I think you would have been quite within your rights in saying that your name was West and letting it go at that."

It was not her intention to receive Mr. West's confidences either at this time or any other. And so, of course, ten minutes later, as she drove uptown, she was "dying" to know all that there was to be known about him. He had gone downstairs with her, and put her into her cab. He might have been a prince with a passion for good manners. He seemed to her wonderfully graceful and at ease, in all that he did.



XIII

Dr. Ferris smiled tolerantly, and said to the footman who had brought the card: "I shall be very glad to see Mr. Allen." And he kept on smiling after the footman had gone. The interview which he foresaw was of that kind which not only did him honor but amused him. Wilmot Allen would not be the first young man to whom the rich surgeon had had the pleasure of putting embarrassing questions: "What can you tell me of your past life and habits?" "Can you support my daughter in the way to which she has always been accustomed?" etc., etc.

But Wilmot Allen did not at once ask permission to address Barbara. He entered with that good-natured air of easy laziness which was rather attractive in him, and without looking in the least troubled announced that what he had come to say embarrassed him greatly.

"And furthermore," he said, "if Barbara hears of it, she'll be furious. She would take the natural and even correct point of view that it's none of my business, and she would select one of the thousand ruthless and brutal methods which young women have at their disposition for the disciplining of young men. So, please, will you consider my visit professional and, if you like," he grinned mischievously, "charge me the regular fee for consultation?"

Dr. Ferris laughed. "I shall be delighted to play father confessor," he said, "if you'll sit down, and smoke a cigar."

Mr. Allen would. He lighted one of Dr. Ferris's cigars with the care due to a thing of value, settled himself in a deep chair, and appeared by slightly pausing to be gathering scattered thoughts into a focus.

"Yes," he said at last, "there's no doubt about it. I am about to be very impertinent. If you like you shall turn me out of your house, with or without kicks, as seems best to you. Barbara needs a nurse, and it seems to me you ought to know it; because in a way it's a reflection on you."

"Quite so," said Dr. Ferris. "I am not at all pleased with Barbara. What has she done?"

"Do you suppose it would be possible to get her interested in anything besides this sculpture business—before it's too late?"

"Too late?"

"Before she gets a taste of success."

"But will she—ever?"

Wilmot Allen nodded eagerly. "She will," he said. "She is doing a head. It's far from finished; but even now, in the rough state, it's quite the most exceptional inspired thing you ever saw. She will exhibit it and become famous overnight. I can't bet much—as you may perhaps suspect—but I'll bet all I've got. And of course, once she gets recognition and everybody begins to kow-tow to her—why, good-by, Barbara."

"Still," said Dr. Ferris, "if she's developing a real talent, I don't know that I ought to stand in her way. And, besides, we've fought that all out, and," he laughed grimly, "I took my licking like a man."

"Of course," said Allen. "When a girl that ought to go in for marriage and that sort of thing takes to being talented—I call it a tragedy. But, passing that, the model for the head she's doing isn't a proper person. That's what I'm driving at. He's one of the wickedest and most unscrupulous persons in the world. Barbara ought not to speak to him, let alone give him the run of her studio and hobnob with him same as with one of her friends. He's a man too busy with villainy to sit as a model for the fun of sitting. The pay doesn't interest him. And if he shows up every morning at nine and stays all morning, it's only because he's got an axe to grind. He talks. He lays down the law. He appeals to Barbara's mind and imagination; and it's all rather horrible—one of those poison snakes that look like an old rubber boot, and a bird all prettiness, bright colors, innocence, and admiration of how the world is made. Look at it in this way. She makes a great hit with the bust. Who's responsible? Well, the creature that supplied the inspiration, largely. She'll feel gratitude. He'll take advantage of anything that comes his way. And frankly, Dr. Ferris, I may be making a mountain out of a mole-hill, but I'm worried to death. Suppose I told you that, say, Duane Carter spent hours every day in Barbara's studio?"

Dr. Ferris jumped to his feet, white with anger. "Do you mean to tell me that my daughter is friendly with that person?"

"Oh, no," said Allen calmly. "I think Barbara's new friend is a very much more dangerous person for her to know. Whatever Duane Carter is he wouldn't dare. This other man—"

"Look here, Wilmot"—Dr. Ferris began to pace the room in considerable agitation—"you're an old friend of Barbara's. Is friendliness at the root of your worry, or is it some other feeling, not so disinterested as friendship?"

Wilmot Allen rose to his full height, and Dr. Ferris paused in his pacings. They faced each other.

"If I was any good," said the young man slowly, "if I had any money, if Barbara would have me, I'd marry her to-morrow. But I'm not any good—never was. I haven't any money, hardly ever have had, and Barbara would no more have me of her own free will than she'd take a hammer and smash the bust she's making. So much for motives. Have I disposed of jealousy?"

Dr. Ferris nodded.

"The man," said Allen, "isn't a man. He's a gutter-dog, a gargoyle, half a man. And his position in the city—in the whole country, I think—is so fortified that with the best will in the world the law cannot touch him. Duane Carter—well, he's been a gay boy with the ladies—a bad man if you like—but at least he is not accused by gossip of murder, arson, abduction, and crimes infinitely worse than these. He may have beguiled women, but at least his worst enemy would never suppose that he had trafficked in them. Barbara's model is all the things that you can imagine. And all of them are written in his horrible face. To see them together, friendly, reparteeing, chummy, would turn your stomach—Barbara so exquisite and high-born, and the man, his eyes full of evil fires, sitting like a great toad on the model's chair. And at that—good God, you might stand it, if he was a whole man! But he isn't. It's horrible! He has no legs—and you want to stamp on him till he's dead."

Dr. Ferris had turned white as a sheet. "To me," he said quietly, "that is the most horrible form of mutilation. I can't tell you why. It is so. And you will believe that in my practice I have encountered all sorts. But who is he?"

"He's a man named Blizzard—he passes for a beggar, grinds an organ, sells shoe-laces and that sort of thing. As a matter of fact, he's very well off, if not rich. Why don't you visit Barbara's studio to-morrow, look things over, and put a stop to it? You can say things to Barbara that I can't, that no young man can say to a girl. Go as far as you like. Whatever you tell her about him will be true even if you can't prove it. You can make her see what thin ice she's skating on. Or if you can't nobody can."

"I'll go to the studio to-morrow," said the surgeon. "I am very much disturbed by what you have told me: the more so because as a physician I have learned how many impossible things are true. Have you told me all you wish to? Or is there more? Do you think," he spoke very steadily, "that Barbara cares for this beast? Such things happen in the world, I know."

"God forbid," said Allen, "but I think he has a sort of fascination for her, and that she doesn't realize it. You'll let your visit appear casual and accidental, won't you? You won't let Barbara suspect that I had anything to do with it?"

Dr. Ferris promised, and the two parted with mutual good-will; but neither the next morning, nor the morning after that, was Dr. Ferris at liberty to pay a visit to Barbara in her studio. Nominally retired from active practice, and devoting whatever of life should remain to surgical experimentation and theory, the sudden and acute jeopardy of an old friend caused him to put all other considerations aside for the time being, and once more to don the white harness of his profession. For two days Dr. Ferris hardly left his friend's side; on the morning of the third day, quite worn out, his jumping nerves soothed by a small dose of morphine, he called a taxicab, gave Barbara's number in McBurney Place, leaned back against the leather cushions, relaxed his muscles, and fell asleep.

The taxicab and the legless man reached the curb in front of Barbara's studio at the same moment. The driver of the cab lifted one finger to his hat. The legless man nodded, and peering into the cab recognized the handsome features of the sleeping doctor. He smiled, and said to the driver:

"Take him back to his house."

The driver said: "If I do he'll enter a complaint."

"No," said the legless man; "you will tell him when he wakes that he gave you the order himself. He won't know whether he did or not. So-long."

The driver once more lifted one finger to his hat and obediently drove off.

It was very silent in McBurney Place; the double row of ancient stables made over into studio-buildings appeared deserted. The legless man could not but flatter himself that his actions had been unobserved. He chuckled, and with even more than his usual deft alacrity climbed the stairs to Barbara's studio.

Meanwhile, however, a young man and a small boy, looking through the curtains of the latter's bedroom window, had been witnesses of all that passed.

"That was Miss Barbara's father in the taxi," said Harry West.

"Looks like he'd been out all night," said Bubbles.

"He may have been drugged."

"Doubt it. The taxi turned north at the corner. If the ole 'un had had the doctor drugged o' purpose he'd 'a' sent him south where he could use him. I guess he's sent him home."

"He doesn't want his morning with Miss Barbara interrupted."

Harry West sighed and said: "I don't smoke, Bub. Give me a cigarette."

Bubbles accommodated his friend with eagerness.

"And now," said West, "the road's clear to Marrow Lane; better slip down and see if Rose has any word for us. I'll keep a good ear on Blizzard."

Bubbles changed from his buttons to his street-jacket, and departed by the back stairs. Harry West took a small automatic pistol from his breast pocket and played with it, but in the expression of the young man's face was nothing bellicose or threatening; only a kind of gentle, patient misery.

He passed fifteen minutes in taking quick aims with the little automatic pistol at the roses on the wall-paper. Short of actual target-practice, he knew by experience that this was the best way to keep the hand and eye in touch with each other. He let his thoughts run as they would. And presently he heard the sound of Bubbles's feet upon the back stairs.

"All serene here," said West.

"All serene there," said Bubbles, and he produced a slip of paper upon which Rose had written:

"Don't come so often. You've been noticed. He'll tell me things before long—or wring my neck."

"She worked her hands some," said Bubbles, and he made letters of the deaf and dumb alphabet upon his fingers. "She said O'Hagan's in the city. They had him to eat with them last night. He's growed a beard, and trained off twenty pounds, so's not to be knowed."

The air of revery had left Harry West. "O'Hagan in the East!" he exclaimed, rather with exhilaration than excitement. "Things are coming to a head."

"Yep," said Bubbles, "and we don't know what things is—"

"Bubbles! Oh, Bubbles!"

The boy disappeared in the direction of the studio.

"Mr. Blizzard has gone," said Barbara. "Ask Mr. West if he will speak to me a moment."

Mr. West would; and he, the athlete, the man of trained poise, actually overturned a chair in his willingness.

"Mr. West," she said, "you know all sorts of things about people, don't you? And if you don't know them, you can find them out, can't you?"

"Sometimes, Miss Barbara."

"I want to know about the man who comes here to pose—not vague things, but facts; who his people were, what turned him against the world."

"You're troubled, Miss Barbara?"

"I am terribly troubled. He has told me a terrible story. But how do I know if it's true or not? If it's true, he ought not to be hounded and hunted, Mr. West; he ought to be pitied."

"Then I'm sure it's not true," West smiled quietly. "What did he tell you?"

"No matter. But will you find out what you can about him?"

"Why, yes, of course. But believe me, it's not his beginnings that are of importance. It's his subsequent achievements and his schemes for the future."

"Another thing," she said, "I'm sure he means no harm where I'm concerned. He has never known that I have a protector within call, and yet his whole attitude toward me has been gentle, humorous, and even chivalrous. I think," and the color came into her cheeks, "that he feels a fatherly sort of affection for me. So thank you for all the trouble you've taken."

"I, too, have reason to think that he means no harm," said West, "and if that is true, I am wasting my time."

There was a look of bitterness in his eyes that was not lost upon Barbara. And she was troubled.

"Of course," she said, "if you like to waste your time—"

He looked her straight in the eyes. "I do," he said, "I love to. No man's life would ever be complete if he didn't waste the best part of it—throw it away on something or other—on an ambition—on an ideal—on a woman."

Barbara returned his glance. "Just what, Mr. West," she said, "is the idea?"

And here, Mr. Harry West might have found the sudden courage to speak out what was in his heart, had he not remembered that to all intents and purposes he had no father, and consequently in the eyes of the great world to which Barbara belonged could not be considered to have any existence.

"Oh," he said, "I was just talking through my hat."

Barbara, who, you may say, had been unconsciously putting out tentacles of affection toward Harry West, at once withdrew them, and said coolly: "So I supposed."

"May I look at the bust?"

"Certainly."

She removed the damp cloths from her work, and Harry found himself looking into the legless man's face. The features at once attracted and repelled him, and these sensations mingled with them feelings of wonder. Some subconscious knowledge told the young man authoritatively that he was looking on a master work. Barbara noticed this, and her heart warmed, and her pride was gratified.

"I'm going to hurt your feelings," she said.

"Mine? Don't. Please don't."

"If you," she said, "devoted the next twenty years of your life to wickedness and vengeful thoughts you would get to look like my friend, Mr. Blizzard."

Now that same thought had occurred, and not for the first time, to Harry West, but he did not care to admit it. So he laughed gently, and said:

"In that case I shall devote the next twenty years of my life to philanthropy and—loving thoughts."

He turned toward her, all smiling. And she avoided his eyes without appearing to do so.



XIV

The next morning Blizzard was fifteen minutes late to his appointment with Barbara. He had sat up all night with O'Hagan, talking energetically, and for once in his life he felt tired. To this feeling was added the fear—almost ridiculous under the circumstances—that Barbara would scold him for being late. Unscrupulous brute that he was, his infatuation for her was humanizing him. And in the whole world he dreaded nothing so much, at this time, as a look of displeasure in a girl's face.

He had left off the threadbare clothes in which he usually went begging, and had attired himself in clean linen and immaculate gray broadcloth. His face was exquisitely shaved; his nails trimmed and clean. And there hung about him a faint odor of violets. In short, the male of the species had begun to change his plumage, as is customary in the spring of the year.

His mouth full of apology, he hurried up the stairs to the studio, only to find that Barbara herself had not yet arrived. Upon the seat of the chair in which he always posed, the legless man perceived an envelope addressed to himself. This contained a short note:

DEAR MR. BLIZZARD:

I can't be at the studio till eleven. Please find somewhere about you the kindness to wait, or at least to come again at that time. You will greatly oblige,

Yours sincerely,

BARBARA FERRIS.

Blizzard read his note three times; it was very friendly. The "Yours sincerely" touched his imagination. Especially the "Yours."

"Yours," he said, "mine," and with a sudden idiocy of passion he crushed the note to his lips. And then, as if with remorse at having been rough with a helpless thing, he smoothed out the crumpled sheet, and placed it, together with its envelope, in that pocket which was nearest to his heart. Then he seated himself on the edge of the model's platform, laid his crutches aside, closed his eyes, and for perhaps five minutes slept, motionless as a statue, except that now and then his ears twitched. At the end of five minutes, he waked, greatly refreshed, and ready, if the need should arise, to sit up the whole of the following night.

There was a sound of a man's steps mounting the stairs. And then a brisk knocking on the studio door.

"Come in," said Blizzard.

Dr. Ferris entered, hesitated, and then closed the door behind him.

"You'll pardon me," said Blizzard coolly, "if I don't get up?"

"Yes—yes," said Dr. Ferris, and in his handsome eyes was a look of pain and pity.

"It isn't easy for me to get up," Blizzard continued in the same cool, emotionless voice, "you can see for yourself. I can't spring to my feet—like other men. Do you know who I am?"

"Yes," said Dr. Ferris, "I'm afraid I do. But they told me the name of the man who has been posing for Miss Ferris was Blizzard. Your name—"

"My name," said Blizzard, "is forgotten."

Dr. Ferris bowed gravely. "Quite so, Mr. Blizzard," he said.

"Miss Barbara," said Blizzard, watching closely the effect upon the older man of the familiarity, "will not be here till eleven. And as you and I cannot possibly have anything pleasant to say to each other, and as you, although the older man, are far better off than I am for means of locomotion, and as even thinking of you has something the effect upon my stomach that mustard and warm water would have—"

"If you have any mercy in your heart," said Dr. Ferris, his mouth distorted with emotion, "don't talk to me that way. What made a hell of your life has made a hell of mine."

The look of cold hatred in Blizzard's face changed at once to curiosity. "Really?" he said; "you mean that?"

"It is the truth."

Blizzard considered, and then shook his head. "No," he said, "it couldn't be the same. It may have stretched you on the hot grid now and then, but between times of remorse you've had long, long stretches of success and happiness. I haven't. I have burned in hell fires from that day to this."

"I told you on that day," said the surgeon, "that if there was ever anything under heaven that I could do for you, I would do it. You've never called upon me for anything—money—or service."

"I've not forgotten," said Blizzard, "and some day I may hold you to your word. Right here and now I will ask something of you—an absolutely truthful answer to a question. Do you hate me?"

Dr. Ferris turned the question over in his conscience, and presently said: "I am sorry. Yes."

"Thank you," said Blizzard, who was not in the least disturbed. "I've often wondered, and even, putting a hypothetical case, thrashed the matter out with my friends. You would hate me. It's thoroughly human. With me, for instance—I feel non-committal about a man. I decide to injure him. I do so. And then I hate him. Now, if you have any message for Miss Barbara—or perhaps you came to see the bust. I will call Bubbles. He and Miss Barbara are the only persons allowed to touch the cloths. I think she'd let me uncover the thing, but, as you and I know so well, I am not tall enough."

"My business with my daughter," said Dr. Ferris, "concerned you."

Blizzard chuckled. "Her friends," said he, "have been at you to interfere. They have persuaded you that her model should be persona non grata in the best studios. They have, in short, begged you to take me by the scruff of the neck and kick me out into the gutter where I belong. Well, kick me. You know as well as I do, that I can't kick back."

"You hurt me very much," said Dr. Ferris simply, "if that is any pleasure to you."

"It is," said Blizzard.

"What your intuition has told you," continued Barbara's father, "is the truth. I had made up my mind to interfere."

"Well, why should you?"

"I have heard terrible things about you, Mr. Blizzard."

"That I have done things which the world regards as terrible is true," returned the legless man imperturbably. "What of it? Haven't you?"

Dr. Ferris turned away and slowly paced the length of the studio and back. "I owe you," he then said, "anything you choose to ask. But that is not the whole of my obligation to this world as I see it."

"You will oblige me," said Blizzard, "by spitting out the moral homily into which you are trying to get your teeth. It is very simple. I do not wish to be sent away. I ask you not to send me. If your statement that you owe me anything I choose to ask amounts to two pins' worth, I think that I shall continue to pose for your daughter as long as she needs me."

"Oh, I'm quite helpless," said Dr. Ferris; "I realize that."

"Spoken like a man," said Blizzard. "And to show that my nature isn't entirely cruel, I'll tell you for your comfort that in Miss Barbara's presence the bad man is a very decent sort. We are almost friends, Doctor, she and I. She talks to me as if I were her equal. As for me, in this studio I have learned the habit of innocent thought. Only yesterday I took pleasure in the idea that in the world there are birds, and flowers, and green fields."

The beggar's eyes glittered with a sardonic look. He watched the surgeon as a tiger might watch a stag. There was quite a long silence. Dr. Ferris broke it.

"For God's sake," he said with great energy, "tell me one truth. Is it part of your scheme of life to revenge yourself on me through my daughter?"

Blizzard raised a soothing hand. "Dr. Ferris," he said, "what would cause you suffering would cause her suffering. So, you see, I am tied hand and—Pardon me! I shouldn't now think of hurting you through her unless it might be for her own happiness."

"I don't understand."

"Then you don't understand the hearts of women. Then you know nothing of the heights to which even fallen men can raise their eyes."

"What are you telling me?"

"Very little—very much. Perhaps I love your daughter."

Horror and loathing swept into the surgeon's eyes, but he controlled himself. "Mr. Blizzard," said he presently, "I find it hard to take you seriously. Are you joking? Whether you are or not, the thing is a joke. If you really care for my daughter, I am very, very sorry for you. I can't say more. If nothing worse threatens her than the possibility of her heart being touched by you, there is no need for me to be anxious about her. As for telling her the truth about you and me, why not?"

"You tell her."

"I will. To-night"

"Won't you be playing into my hands?"

"No," said the surgeon curtly, "she has too much common-sense."

"But you won't tell her what I've said?" The beggar was suddenly anxious.

"No," and Dr. Ferris smiled, "I may safely leave that to you."

"Damnation," cried Blizzard, "you are laughing at me."

Dr. Ferris's face became serious at once. "God forbid that!" he said. "If you have spoken sincerely I feel only sorrow for you and pity—more sorrow and pity for you even than I ever felt before."

"S-s-s-s-t," exclaimed the beggar, and his ears twitched. "She's coming."

"I shall wait," said Dr. Ferris, "and take her uptown, when she has finished working."

"Well," said Blizzard, with a kind of humorous resignation, "I'd kick you out if I could; but I can't." And he added: "You haven't got an extra pair of legs about you, have you?"

"Why!" said Barbara when she saw her father. "Art is looking up. You in a studio!"

Secretly his presence pleased her immensely. She had always hoped that some day he would take enough interest in her work to come to see it uninvited. And she now felt that this had happened. And she thanked Blizzard with sincerity for having waited.

"Mr. Blizzard and I," she told her father, "are doing a bust. And whatever anybody else thinks, we think it's an affair of great importance. Mr. Blizzard even gives me his time and his judgment for nothing."

"Well," Dr. Ferris smiled, "I am willing to give you the latter, on the same terms. May I see what you've done?"

Barbara removed the cloths from the bust, and so life-like and tragic was the face which suddenly confronted him that Dr. Ferris, instead of stepping forward to examine it closely, stepped backward as if he had been struck. And then:

"My dear," he said gravely, "the thing's alive."

He looked from the bust to his daughter, and felt as if he was meeting some very gifted and important person for the first time. Barbara laughed for sheer pleasure.

"What do you think of it?"

"I will buy it as it stands," said her father, "on your own terms."

"If you think it's good now," said Blizzard quietly, "wait till it's finished."

"If I had done it," said Dr. Ferris, "I wouldn't dare touch it."

"Yes, you would," said Barbara, "if you knew that you could make it better. It's still a beginning."

"When do you expect to finish?"

"I'm going to keep on working until I know that I've done the best I can. We may be months on it."

Blizzard smiled secretly, and Dr. Ferris managed to conceal his annoyance.

"I wish, my dear," he said, "that I had taken you more seriously in the beginning. But it is not too late to get some advantage by studying in Paris and Rome."

"I don't believe it's ever too late for that," said Barbara, "and of course I've always been crazy for the chance, but knowing how you felt—"

"Say the word," said her father, "and you shall go to-morrow."

Blizzard's face was like stone; he felt that his high hopes were on a more precarious footing than ever. If she had the whim, Barbara would go abroad, far beyond the reach of even his long arms.

"You could finish your bust any time," said Dr. Ferris persuasively.

But Barbara shook her head with complete decision. "A bird in the hand," she said, "is worth two in the bush. And—I hope I'm wrong—but I have the conviction that this head is going to be the best thing I shall ever do. I can look at it quite impersonally, because half the time it seems to model itself. I think it's going to be good. If it is good, it will be one of those lucky series of accidents that sometimes happen to undeserving but lucky people."

Dr. Ferris sighed inwardly, but the expression of his face did not change. "Do you mind if I stay?" he asked. "I think it's time I knew what you look like when you are at work, don't you?"

"High time!" exclaimed Barbara. "I'll just get into my apron." She went into the next room and closed the door.

"Your innocents abroad," said the legless man, "wasn't a success." His face was a jeer.



XV

"Barbara," said her father when they had finished dinner, "I made a threat this morning, and I'm going to keep it. If you have no especial objection, will you come into the library?"

Her face was radiant; he had been praising her work for the tenth time. "It sounds," she said, "as if I was going to be whipped. That wasn't what you threatened to do, was it?"

"No," said he. "I'm to be punished. I'm going to tell you about a mistake of judgment I once made. But not as a warning, or a moral lesson—merely, my dear, that you and I may learn to know each other better. First, though, I want to talk to you about your model."

"He's rather fascinating, don't you think?"

"He is very clever," said her father, "and when he chooses he can talk very well. He proved that this morning. To me, personally, he is most repugnant, but I admit that when he once launched out, I listened as a school-boy listens to stories of treasure and pirates. He's lived and observed and suffered. There is no doubt about that. But I shall be greatly relieved to hear that your bust is finished. I don't like the idea of such a man being in the same block with you. I hope that you will not feel inspired to do another head of him."

"He's a splendid model," said Barbara. "Of course this morning he didn't keep still—and he did talk. But then I wasn't really working; When I wish he keeps almost as still as the clay I work with."

"Doesn't looking at him ever give you—oh, a disagreeable creepy feeling?"

"Not any more. I'm so used to him now. No, I feel a genuine friendliness for him,"

"I thought," said her father, "that to you artists, models were absolutely impersonal—just planes and angles and—what was it you used to say?"

Barbara flushed slightly, remembering a former and very disagreeable conversation. "Your memory is much too good," she said.

Dr. Ferris frowned, "I'm not trying to interfere," he said; "you're old enough to know what's best for you, but if I could instil in you a proper distaste for your friend, Mr. Blizzard, I should be delighted. Beauty and the beast do not go well together."

"Please" said Barbara, "don't bother your head about me. When the bust is finished, you and I go abroad for to look, for to see, for to learn. That's agreed. We shall not invite Mr. Blizzard to go with us, and all will be well. There's my hand on it!"

She laughed rosily, and they shook hands.

"Until recently," said Dr. Ferris, "I have taken, as you know, very little interest in your career as a sculptor. Haven't you thought that rather an unnatural attitude?"

"Why, yes," said Barbara, "I have."

She took a box of safety matches from a cigar-table, and kneeling, lighted the fire in the big chimney-piece.

"I hope you don't mind," she said; "I'm shivery."

She knelt on, watching the little flames grow into big flames, and spreading her hands to the warmth. Her face, arms, throat, and the front of her white dress became golden. She looked more like some lovely vestal of fire-worship than an ambitious American girl, determined to achieve fame in the battleground of the world.

"Why, yes," she repeated, "it has seemed strange to me. When I've thought that I wanted to do things, you always took a lot of interest and trouble, but when I knew that I wanted to do one thing, you gave me a dreadfully cold shoulder." She smiled whimsically. "I shall do an allegory in bluish-white marble—The Cold Shoulder."

She retreated a little from the fire, and sat at her father's feet. He laid his hand on her many-colored hair.

From childhood Barbara had resented parental caresses. On the present occasion, she felt a sudden tenderness for her father, and leaned a little against him, in answer to the touch of his hand.

"Did it ever," said he, "strike you as strange that you never took any interest in my career?"

"I've always been tremendously proud of you," she said. "You know that."

"You liked my results," he said, "the show pieces—newspaper notoriety—speech-making—the races in special trains against death. But you don't even know what has chiefly interested me during the last thirty years; nor the goal which I have felt I must reach before I could be resigned to parting with this life."

"No," she said gently, "I don't. Tell me. I want to be interested."

"You know, of course, that I experiment with animals."

"Yes. I have seen crates of guinea-pigs and monkeys at the laboratory door. I'm afraid it always made me a little unhappy. But I suppose it's the only way to get certain results. And you always give them something, don't you?"

"Always. They don't suffer more than a man would while healing a deep clean cut. In other words, they don't suffer at all. And they're not unhappy, and they don't bear malice. And still I wouldn't do it, if I could help myself. I think, my dear, that I have been chosen for my sins to introduce a great benefit to mankind. It seems now only a question of perfecting the technique. I've already had extraordinary results."

"What's the idea?"

"You know, of course, that a piece of skin from one man can be successfully grafted on another man. Well, so can a liver, a finger, a hand, a foot, an arm, a leg. I have two monkeys now: a black and a gray. The black monkey has the gray hands and forearms, the gray monkey has the black. I made the exchange eighteen months ago. And they have developed the same strength and skill with the grafted members that they had with their own. I have a monkey who had only one eye when he came. Now he has two—they aren't a good color match, but he sees as well with one as the other. When these ideas are perfected it will be possible, perhaps, to make old people young. The secret is absolute cleanliness and the accuracy in joining of a Chippendale or an Adams. So you see," he smiled, "that in a way you and I are chasing the same ambition—how to express the thing imagined through perfection of technique."

"Are you the only man working along these lines?"

"Heavens, no! Aristotle probably believed in animal grafting. But I think that, owing to a natural talent for doing close and accurate work with my hands, I have gone farther than anybody else. What gave you the impulse to be a sculptor, Barbs?"

She laughed gayly. "The statues in the Metropolitan that have lost their arms and heads and legs. I felt very sorry for them. I was very young and foolish, and I invented a game to play. I'd select a statue that needed an arm, say, and then I'd hunt among the other statues for an arm that would fit, or for a head or whatever else was missing. Through playing that game I got the idea of making whole statues from the beginning and not bothering with fragments."

"And to think," said Dr. Ferris, "that we have failed to understand each other. Why, Barbs, your ambition is a direct lineal descendant of mine. It was a maimed marble that showed you your life's work. It was a maimed child that showed me mine. It seems that at heart we are both menders."

"I began on dolls," said Barbara.

"And I began on guinea-pigs."

A footman entered with whiskey and soda on a tray. Barbara rose.

"Shall I pour you a drink?"

"A very little one, please."

She poured him his drink, and once more seated herself at his feet.

"After I graduated from the P. & S.," said Dr. Ferris, "I did ambulance work for two years, accidents, births, fires. I was ambitious to learn, and worked myself sick. One morning, after I'd been all night bringing a most reluctant young Polack into the world, I was called to the house of a world-famous man in East Thirty-fourth Street. The house was full of servants mad with grief and fright. The man and his wife had gone out of town, and their son, a beautiful boy about ten years old, had got himself run over by a truck. His governess, I gathered, a German fool, had been in some way directly responsible. But that is the small end of the matter. The boy's legs were horribly crushed and mangled. It seemed to me that if his life was to be saved, they must come off at once. The family's physician was the famous old Doctor Watson Bell. I sent for him. He didn't come at once, and when I had waited as long as I dared, I took upon my own shoulders the very heavy responsibility of operating. I put the child under ether, and with the help of one assistant took his legs off just below the hip-joints. Then Dr. Bell came. He was a very old friend of my father's, and he had always been very good to me. First he looked to see that what had been done had been well done. Then he examined the legs that I had taken off. Then he sent the nurse out of the room. Then he turned and looked at me, and his face was gray and cold as a stone. He said: 'You fool! You imbecile!' And he showed me, clear as a flash of lightning, that the legs never should have been amputated. Then he said, more gently: 'For your father's sake I will save your face, young man. I shall set my approval to this catastrophe. For your father's sake, and for your mother's. I have always looked on you as an adopted son. Are you drunk?' I told him that I had been up all night, and had had no sleep since five o'clock the morning before. He shrugged his shoulders, and said: 'In your right mind, you couldn't have done it,' and I knew that I couldn't. 'Horrible!' he said, 'horrible! This poor baby to be a wreck of a thing all his life, because a healthy and hearty young man cannot get along on a little sleep. But, thank God, the child will never know that the operation wasn't necessary,'