XLV

They all chatted away and jibed each other and joked as they worked, and would tell stories.

“Some time later, I was starving.” He said that as if it were quite the usual thing to starve a bit. “I hadn’t eaten for two days, and all of a sudden I put my hand in that pocket, and found a sausage and some cheese. It surely saved my life.”

All of their stories were a curious mixture of tragedy and exquisite humor, and while I laughed one minute my eyes would fill up the next. I suppose, after all, that’s just how life is really compounded—of tragedy and comedy. It’s good to be able to feel both of these elements in our lives. A writer once referred to some of his characters as: “deadpeople”—dead in the sense of simply being unable to grasp at any significance in life save the dull living from day to day. It seems to me one does not regret passing through scorching fires. It’s the only way one can get the big vision of life. I used to feel bitter, when I contemplated the easy life of other girls, and compared it with my own hard battle. Now I know that, had I to go through it all again, I would not exchange my hard experiences for the luxury that is the lot of others. I can even understand what it is to pity and not envy the rich. Theymiss so much. Money cannot buy that knowledge of humanity that comes only to him who has lived among the real people in the world—the poor!

All of which is what Bonnat would call “beside the question”—digression, that has “nothing to do with the thing, tra la!”

“Do you see that piece of drapery, Miss Ascough?” said Mr. Christain. “Well, Bonnat bought that yesterday at a little Jew shop on Third Avenue where they have several prices for everything. He asked: ‘What’s the price,’ and the Jew gave him the top-notch: ‘ninety-eight cent one yard,’ said he. ‘Ninety-eight cents!’ shouted that big chump there, ‘that’s dirt cheap! I’ll take it!’ He could have got it for fifteen, and when the Jew was wrapping it up, I could see by his face that he was sorry he hadn’t charged ninety-nine. Can you beat him for an easy mark?”

“Strikes me,” growled Bonnat, “we’re not particularly easy on Miss Ascough. She’s been posing over her time.”

“True enough,” said Fisher.

“Well, what’s the verdict?” demanded Bonnat, beaming down upon me. “Shall we have her next week, or get a nice little soft blonde in?”

I thought he was talking seriously, and I said:

“Oh, I hope you’ll have me. I like posing for you all.”

“You do?” said Bonnat, and then he added roughly: “It’s damned hard work, isn’t it?”

I said:

“Not with fellows like you. I forgot I was posing. I like to hear you all talk.”

They all laughed at that, and seemed much pleased. So then I was engaged to come again the following Sunday, to “hear them all talk.”

IHAD been posing for several Sundays for the “Club” in Paresis Row. At first, all four of the men came regularly. Then Enfield dropped out, then Christain, who was out of work, and finally one Sunday when I arrived I found only Bonnat there. He insisted that I should remain, as, he said, he was very much in need of a model.

He had been working away, without speaking once to me for some time. It was funny to watch his face while he worked, making curious facial expressions and attitudes corresponding to certain expressions and emotions. When he was through, I went over and looked at the painting, and I thought it was very wonderful. I said shyly:

“If you like, I’ll take it to some of the dealers I sell Mr. Menna’s paintings to, and Mr. Bonnat”— I wanted him to know that I, too, could paint, but I had never the courage to tell him before all the other men—“I sometimes sell some of my own, too.”

He turned around slowly and looked at me.

“So you paint, too, do you?”

I nodded.

After a moment, he said:

“We won’t bother about those dealers you speak of, but I’d like to see your work.”

“I get ten dollars for a painting sometimes,” I said, thinking that would be an added inducement to him to let me help him sell his paintings. He smiled when I said that and after a moment he said:

“Ten dollars are a mighty comfortable thing, and so are two pairs of darned socks, as Oliver Twist would have said; but there’s something besides the selling question in all these efforts of ours—don’t you know that?”

“You mean self-expression?” I asked timidly. I had heard studio talk before.

“Yes—self-expression, and a good many other things besides.”

He paused, studying me musingly.

“I wonder if you will understand,” he said almost to himself, and then he added, with a beaming look: “Yes, I am sure you will. It’s this way: If our art is our life, then perhaps we had best follow Goethe’s advice and live resolutely in the good, the whole and the true. To do that we must knowvalues—values on the canvas and values in life.”

Reggie’s scale of values flashed to my mind.

“To be well informed,” he went on, “generally helps us to recognize values.”

“The value of one’s paintings?” I asked slyly.

“I have an inclination to regard you as a little mouse,” he said, “but if you bite like that, I shall call you a flea instead. Yes, that value, and the value of money, too, by—hearsay.”

As he talked I had a sense of excitement, a certain uplifting thrill, as it were. It seemed to me he was opening the doors into a world that I had previously merely sensed. I knew dimly of its existence. The girls at Lil’s had said: “Well, whatdoyou want then?” I did not know myself. I think it was simply a blind, intuitive reaching after the light of understanding. Ifeltthese things, but I could not express my needs. I was of the inarticulate, but not the unfeeling. Bonnat must have realized this quality in me, else he would not have revealed himself so freely to me. He talked with an odd mixture of seriousness and lightness. It was almost as if he slowly chose his words, to make himself clear, just as if he were speaking to a child—a child he was not entirely sure of, but whom he wanted to reach.

“I do know what you mean,” I cried. “Do you know Kipling’s ‘L’Envoi?’—because that expresses it exactly.”

“Let’s hear it.”

And I recited warmly, for I loved it:

“When earth’s last picture is paintedAnd the tubes are twisted and dry,When the oldest colors are faded,And the youngest critic has died,We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it—Lie down for an æon or two,Till the Master of all good workmenShall set us to work anew.And those who are good shall be happy;They shall sit in a Golden Chair;They shall splash at a ten-league canvasWith brushes of Comet’s hair;They shall find real saints to draw from—Magdalene, Peter and Paul;They shall work for an age at a sitting,And never be tired at all;And only the Master shall praise us,And only the Master shall blame;And no one shall work for money,And no one shall work for Fame:But each for the joy of the working;And each in his separate starShall draw the thing as he sees itFor the God of Things as They are!”

“Bully!” cried Bonnat. “Your dramatic training was not lost. Only one thing—”

“What?”

He put his two hands on my shoulders, and gave me a friendly little shake and hug:

“You—lithp!” (lisp) he said.

Before I could protest at that deadly insult he took my hands and squeezed them hard, and he said:

“I believe we speak the same language after all. Wethinkit, anyway, don’t we?”

IHAD been posing all afternoon. Bonnat still insisted on my coming each Sunday, although the other men were through with me for the time being. I was not sure that Bonnat could really afford to have a model alone, and I often thought I should not go; but somehow I found myself unable to keep away. All week long I looked forward to that afternoon in Paul Bonnat’s studio, and the thought that they could not last made me feel very badly.

“Look at the time!” He pointed dramatically to the clock on the shelf. It was upside down. Then he regarded me remorsefully:

“You must be tired out, and hungry, too. What do you say to having dinner with me to-night? How about one of those awful Italian table-d’hotes, where they give you ten courses with red ink for the price of a sandwich? Will that suit you?”

I was seized with a distaste to go out in the rain, even with Bonnat, to one those melancholyrestaurants. I looked about me, and sighing, said:

“I wish I had a place to cook. I’m awfully tired of restaurants.”

“What, can you cook?” he demanded excitedly, just as if he had discovered some miraculous talent in me.

“Why, yes,” I said proudly. “And I love to, too. I can cook anything,” I added sweepingly.

“You don’t say.” His eyes swept the room. “Where’s that trunk?” He found it, and called to me to come and see what it contained.

“See here—how’s this? I brought these things with me when I first left home, and intended to cook for myself, but a fellow can’t bother with these things. Hasn’t got the time, and then everything gets lost about the place,” he added ruefully. “Now here’s a little gas stove. I use it to heat water for shaving, and sometimes when the boys come in on a cold night we make a hot drink.”

I had picked up a little brass kettle, and I saw him looking at it. He put his hands on the other side of it gently, and he said:

“That belonged to my mother. She’s been dead two years now.”

“Oh, we’ll not touch it,” I declared. “We’ll make coffee in something else.”

He pressed the little kettle upon me.

He stood in the doorway just looking about him, and slowly over his face there came the most beautiful smile I have seen in the world.

“No, no, you shall make it in this. My mother would have liked you to. I wish you could have known her.”

“I wish I could,” I said earnestly. Bonnat stared at me a moment, and then he said, moving toward the door:

“I’m going to the delicatessen, and I’ll bring back what?”

“Anything that is not cooked,” I said. “I do so want to cook a real dinner, and there’s a couple of pans here though I wish there was more than one gas thing.”

While he was gone I went quickly to work. I fairly flew about that studio, putting everything to rights, piling up the things in their proper places, hanging up the things that should be hung, and sweeping, tidying, dusting, till it really looked like a different place. Then I set the table with two plates I found in his trunk, one teaspoon, one knife and two forks. There was only one cup between us, but there were two glasses. Presently Bonnat came in with his arms full of packages. He stood in the doorway, just looking about him, and slowly over his face there came the most beautiful smile I have ever seen in the world. Somehow it just seemed to embrace the whole room, and me, too. He set the packages down, and this is what he had bought: Frankfurters, cheese, eggs, butter, bread, pickles, jam,and a lot of other things, but not a thing to cook except the frankfurters. I must have looked disappointed, for he asked anxiously:

“Isn’t it all right?”

“Oh, I had set my mind on making a rice pudding,” I said.

“That’s all right,” he declared eagerly. “You shall, too. What do you need for it?”

“Well, rice, cinnamon, sugar, milk, eggs and butter.”

He laughed, and went singing and rattling down the stairs on his second errand. I could hear him when he came back all the way from the entrance of the building; but I loved his noise!

I made that pudding. As we had no oven, I had to boil it, but I put cinnamon heavily on top, so it looked as if browned, and it did taste good. We were both so tired of the cheap restaurants that everything tasted just fine, and Bonnat leaned over the table and fervently declared that I was the best cook he had ever met in his life. We were both laughing about that, when after a rat-tat on the door, it burst open and in came Fisher. He stopped short and stared at us.

“Well, upon my word, you look like newly-weds,” he said, and that made me blush so that I pretended to drop something and leaned overto pick it up, for I was ashamed to look at Paul Bonnat after that.

“My, but it smells good,” said Fisher. “Got a bite for another beggar, Miss Ascough?” Then his eye went slowly and amazedly about the room, and he exclaimed: “Gee whiz! Have the fairies been to work? Well, you certainly look cozy now.”

He drew up a chair, and went to work on the remnants of our feast, talking constantly as he ate.

“Say, Miss Ascough, we fellows can have lots of spreads like this, now that we know you can cook.”

“What do you take her for?” growled Bonnat. “Do you think the whole hungry bunch of you are going to have her cooking for you? Not on your life, you’re not.”

Fisher laughed.

“By the way, there’s a bunch of us going down to the Bowery to-morrow night. We’ll get chop suey at a pretty good joint there, and then we’re going to Atlantic Garden where we can get those big steins of beer. Why don’t you bring Miss Ascough along?”

Bonnat leaned over the table and asked:

“Willyou go with me?” just as if I would be conferring a great favor on him, and I said that I would. After that I was included in all theirlittle trips, and sometimes I would try to pretend I was a boy, too; only there was Paul, and somehow when I looked at Paul, I was glad I was a girl.

IWAS helping Menna that day. He had been very busy, and I had been working for him both mornings and afternoons. He had told me, however, that soon he expected to “pick up and go West,” and I was troubled about that. I depended upon Menna for most of my work, and we got along splendidly together. As I have said, Menna had always treated me just like a “fellow” as he would call it.

There was a knock at the door, and in came Paul Bonnat. After nodding to Menna, he strolled over to where I was working and stood at the back of me, watching me paint.

“She’s quite a painter,” he said after a moment to Menna, who looked up and nodded, and said:

“Yes, she does quite O. K.”

After a while Menna turned around on his stool and asked:

“Got anything on to-night, Bonnat?”

“No—nothing particular.”

“Well, a lady friend of mine is coming in from Staten Island, and I promised to take her somewhere to supper and see the town. Can’t you and Miss Ascough join us?”

Bonnat beamed, just as if Menna had handed him a gift, and he said:

“Sure, if Miss Ascough will go with me.”

I said that I would. I think I would have gone with him anywhere he asked me to.

“Meet us here at seven, then,” said Menna, returning to his work.

“All right. Good-bye.” Bonnat went out, slamming the door noisily behind him. We could hear him singing the “Preislied” from “Meistersinger” as he went up the stairs. He had a big, wonderful baritone voice. We stopped painting to listen to him, but when I turned to resume my work, I found Menna watching me. He said:

“You and Bonnat are getting pretty friendly, eh?”

I felt myself color warmly, but I tried to laugh, and said:

“Oh, no more than I am with any of the other boys.”

Menna had his thumb through his palette, and he stared at me hard. Then he said suddenly:

“Gee! What a fool I was to let him get ahead of me.”

He set down his palette, and came over to my stool:

“Say, Marion” (he had never called me Marion

“She’s quite a painter,” he said, after a moment, to Menna, who looked up and nodded and said, “Yes, she does quite O. K.”

before), “you and I would make a corking good team. Suppose we pair off together to-night, and we’ll put Miss Fleming on to Bonnat? What do you say?”

“Mr. Menna, you had better stick to your own girl,” I said, feeling uneasy. Menna continued to stare down at me and as he said nothing to that, I added:

“You know you and I are just partners in our work, and don’t let’s fool. It’ll spoil everything.”

“Oh, all right,” said he, “I don’t have to get down on my knees to you or any other girl.”

He had never spoken to me like that before. Until this day, he had never asked me to go anywhere with him, nor tried to see me after work hours, and I did not suppose he was the least bit interested in me, and I supposed he was quite settled with his own sweetheart. I was so glad when Miss Fleming knocked on the door.

That evening we all went to Shefftel Hall. It was one of the oldest places in New York, and was interesting because of the class of people who patronized the place and its resemblance to the German gardens, which it was in fact itself. There were German ornaments and steins all around the place on a high shelf. There was an excellent orchestra which played good selections and Bonnat hummed when they played some of his favorites. Menna and Bonnat seemed todiffer on almost every subject, and Menna seemed in a savagely contrary mood that night.

Bonnat would explain his point of view about something, and Menna would say irritably:

“Yes, yes, but what’s the use?”

Bonnat said that a man should show in his work the human mood, and that a picture should mean something more than a pretty melody of colors. Menna interrupted him with:

“What’s the use, as long as we get good Pilsener beer?”

Paul laughed at that, and called to a waiter to bring some more Pilsener for Menna right away. After the dinner was over, Mr. Menna took Miss Fleming home, and Paul and I walked up Fourteenth Street, stopping to look in the windows, and to glance at the curious people in the throngs that passed us. Fourteenth Street was then a very gay and bedizened place at night.

When we reached my door, Paul, who had been very silent, took my hand and held it for some time, without saying a word. I could feel his eyes looking down on me in the darkness of the street, and somehow the very clasp of his hand seemed to be speaking to me, telling me things that made me feel warm, and, oh! so happy. When he did speak at last, his big voice was curiously repressed, and he said huskily:

“I think I know now why some men give up art for the sake of protecting theirown!” He said “own” with such strange emphasis, pressing my hand as he said it, that I felt too moved to answer him, and I had a great longing to put my arms around him and draw his head down to mine.

After that night Mr. Menna did not seem the same to me. All the little kindnesses I had been accustomed to receive from him, such as cleaning my palette, my brushes, and nailing my canvases on the stretchers, he now let me do myself, and once when I asked him to varnish a painting of mine, he answered:

“Why don’t you get that Bonnat to do it for you?”

“Dear Marion:Mr. Hirsh is going to put on the living pictures in Providence for two weeks, and he says he would like to take the same girls that he had before, and told me to tell you that he will pay twenty dollars a week. Also that he will take us to Boston and some other places if we do well in Providence.Why don’t you come and see us to-night? and bring along the fellow Hatty said she saw you walking with on Fourteenth St. How are you anyway?—I’m leaving for Providence to-morrow. With love,Lil.”

“Dear Marion:

Mr. Hirsh is going to put on the living pictures in Providence for two weeks, and he says he would like to take the same girls that he had before, and told me to tell you that he will pay twenty dollars a week. Also that he will take us to Boston and some other places if we do well in Providence.

Why don’t you come and see us to-night? and bring along the fellow Hatty said she saw you walking with on Fourteenth St. How are you anyway?—I’m leaving for Providence to-morrow. With love,

Lil.”

I had been thinking of Lil’s letter all day, but I could not make up my mind how to answer it. The thought of making forty dollars in two weeks appealed to me very much, for we were not very busy now, and Menna expected to go West very soon. On account of my work with Menna I had not done much posing in New York, but I intended to call on some artists and see about engagements when Menna should go. Forty dollars was a lot of money to me, and it wouldtake me many weeks to earn that much in posing. It did seem as if I simply could not refuse this chance. But my mind kept turning to Paul Bonnat. I could think of nobody else but him. He had made my life worth while. I thought of all the happy times we had together. He did not have much money to spend on me, and he could not take me to expensive places like Reggie used to, but he lived as I did, and we enjoyed the same things—things that Reggie would have called silly and cheap. We went to the exhibitions of the artists, long walks in the park, to the Metropolitan Museum, and, best of all, to the opera. That was the one thing Paul would be extravagant about, although our seats were in the top gallery of the family circle. I would be out of breath by the time I climbed up there, but I learned to appreciate and love the best only in music, just as Paul was teaching me to understand the best in all art.

There, I listened with mingled feelings and enjoyment to the operas of Wagner. His “Tristan und Isolde” rang in my ears for days, and by the time I heard “Die Meistersinger,” I was able thoroughly to enjoy what before had been unknown land to me. We Canadians had never gone much beyond a little of Mendelssohn, which the teachers of music seemed to consider the height of classical music, and the people werestill singing the old sentimental songs, not the ragtime the Americans love, but the deadly sweet melodies that cloy and teach us nothing. Of course, no doubt, things have changed there now; but it was that way when I was a girl in Montreal.

I did not want to leave New York even for two weeks. I had begun to love my life here. There was something fine in the comradeship with the boys in the old ramshackle studio building. I had been accepted as one of the crowd, and I knew it was Bonnat’s influence that made them all treat me as a sister. Fisher once said that a “fellow would think twice before he said anything to me that wasn’t the straight goods,” and he added, “Bonnat’s so darnedbig, you know.”

I had often cooked for all of the boys in the building. We would have what they called a “spread” in Bonnat’s or Fisher’s studio, and they would all come flocking in, and fall to greedily upon the good things I had cooked. I felt a motherly impulse toward them all, and I wanted to care for and cook for—yes—and wash them, too. Some of the artists in that buildingwere pretty dirty.

Paul had never spoken of love to me, and I was afraid to analyze my feelings for him. Reggie’s letters were still pouring in upon me, and they still harped upon one thing—my runningaway from him in Boston. He kept urging me to come home, and lately he had even hinted that he was coming again to fetch me; but he said he would not tell me when he would come, in case I should run off again.

I used to sit reading Reggie’s letters with the queerest sort of feelings for, as I read, I would not see Reggie in my mind at all, but Paul Bonnat. It did seem as if all the things that Reggie said that once would have pierced and hurt me cruelly had now lost their power. I had even a tolerant sort of pity for Reggie, and wondered why he should trouble any longer to accuse me of this or that, or even to write to me at all. I am sure I should not have greatly cared if his letters had ceased to come. And now as I turned over in my mind the question of leaving New York, I thought not of Reggie, but of Paul. It is true, I might only be away for the two weeks in Providence; on the other hand, I realized that should we succeed there, I would be foolish not to go on with the troupe to Boston. I decided finally that I would go.

I went over especially to tell Paul about it. I said:

“Mr. Bonnat, I’m going away from New York, to do some more of that—that living-picture work.” I waited a moment to see what he would say—he had not turned around—and then Iadded, as I wanted to see if he really cared—“Maybe I won’t come back at all.”

He stood up, and took me by the shoulders, making me look straight at him.

“How long are you to be gone?” he demanded, as if he had penetrated my ruse.

“Two weeks in Providence,” I said, “but if we succeed, we go on to Boston and—”

“Promise me you’ll come back in two weeks. Promise me that,” he said.

He was looking straight down into my eyes, and I think I would have promised him anything he asked me to; so I said in a little weak voice:

“I promise.”

“Good!” he replied. “I would not let you go, if it were in my power to stop you, but I know you need the money, and I have no right to deprive you of it. Oh, good God! it’shellnot to be able to—” He broke off, and gently took my hands up in his:

“Look here, little mouse. There’s a chance of my being able to make a big pot of money. I’ll know in a few days’ time. Then you shall not have to worry about anything. But as I am now fixed, why I can’t stop you from anything. I haven’t the right.”

I wanted to tell him that he could stop me from going if he wanted to; but he had not toldme he cared for me, and there was a possibility that I was mistaken about him. He had that big, gentle way with every one, and it might be that I had mistaken his kindly interest in me for something that he did not really feel. So I laughed now lightly, and I said:

“Oh, I’ll be back soon, and if you like you can see me off on the train.”

When we were in the Grand Central the following night, I tried to appear cheerful, but I could not prevent the tears running down my face, and when finally he took my hand to say good-bye, I said:

“Oh, it’s dreadful for me to say this; b-but if I don’t see you soon again I—t-think I will die.”

He bent down when I said that and kissed me right on my lips, and he did not seem to care whether every one in the station saw us or not. Then I knew that he did love me, and that knowledge sent me flying blindly down the platform. After I was aboard, I found I had taken the wrong train to Providence. I should have taken an earlier or a later one. Lil was already there, and was to have met me at the station from the earlier train, but the train I had taken would not get in till four in the morning.

When I arrived in Providence I did not know where to go. I had Lil’s address, but she had written me she was living at a “very respectablehouse” where the people would have been terribly shocked to know she was a model, and I felt I could not go there at such an hour in the morning. The rain was coming down in torrents. A colored boy was carrying my bag, and he asked me where I wanted to go. Indeed, I did not know. When I hesitated, he said that the hotels didn’t take ladies alone, but that he knew of an all-night restaurant where I could get something hot to eat and I could stay there till morning. So he took me over to Minks’. I had often eaten in Minks’ restaurant in Boston, and the place looked quite familiar to me. I had a cup of hot coffee and a sandwich, and then I asked the waitress if there was some place where I could go and freshen or clean up a bit. She whispered to the man at the desk, and he nodded, and then she beckoned to me to follow her. We went upstairs to a sort of loft. It was bare, save of packing cases, but she showed me to a little cracked looking-glass where she said I could do my hair. I told her I had been on the train all night, and she said sympathetically:

“Sure, you look it.”

I went over to Lil’s boarding-house about seven in the morning. She was right near Minks’, and said I was foolish not to have come right over.

Well, we played every night in the theatre in Providence, and we made what theatrical peoplecall a “hit.” The whole town turned out to see us. The girls were all as pleased as could be, and so was Mr. Hirsch, and they made all kinds of plans for the road tour, but I could think of nothing but New York, and I was so lonely, in spite of the noisy company of the girls, that I used to go over and look at the railway tracks that I knew ran clear to New York. And I thought of Paul! I thought of Paul every single minute. The little maid would slip his letters every morning under my door, and I used to cry and laugh before I even opened them and I held them to my lips and face, and I kept them all in the bosom of my dress, right next to me.

We had finished our engagement. Lil and I were coming out of the dressing-room the last night when somebody slapped me on the back. I turned around, and there was Mr. Davis. He was so glad to see me that he nearly wrung my hand off, and he insisted on walking home with us. He told me he was now manager of a theatrical company, and that he had been looking around for me ever since Lil told him I was in New York.

“Now, Marion,” he said, “you are going to begin where you left off in Montreal, and it’s up to you to make good. You’ve got it in you, and I want to be the man to prove it.”

I asked him what he meant, and he said he wasstarting a new “show” in Boston that week, and that he had a part for me that would give me an opportunity.

I said faintly:

“I was going back to New York to-morrow.”

Lil exclaimed:

“What’re you talking about? Aren’t you going along with Mr. Hirsch?”

“Instead of going to New York,” said Mr. Davis, “you come along with me to Boston. Cut out this living-picture stuff. It’s not worthy of you. I always said there was the right stuff in you, Marion, and now I’m going to give you the chance to prove it.”

For a moment an old vision came back to me. I saw myself as “Camille,” the part I had so loved when little more than a child in Montreal, and I felt again the sway of old ambitions. I said to Mr. Davis:

“Oh, yes, I think Iwillgo with you!”

But when I got back to my room, I took out Paul’s last letter. How confident he was of my keeping my promise to return! He wrote of all the preparations he was making, and he said he had a stroke of luck, and that I should share it with him. We should have dinner at Mouquin’s, and then we would see some show, or the opera. Whatever we did, or wherever we went we would be together.

I got out my little writing pad, and I wrote a letter hurriedly to Mr. Davis:

“Dear Mr. Davis:“Will you please excuse me, but I have to go to New York. I’ll let you know later about acting.”

“Dear Mr. Davis:

“Will you please excuse me, but I have to go to New York. I’ll let you know later about acting.”

I sent the note to Mr. Davis by the little maid in the house, and he sent back a sheet with this laconic message upon it:

“Now or never—Give me till morning.”

Lil talked and talked and talked to me all night about it, and she seemed to think I was crazy not to grab this chance that had come to me, and she said any one of the other girls would have gone clean daft about it. She said I was a little fool, and never knew when opportunity came in my way. “Just look,” she said, “how you turned down that chance you had to be a show girl, and all of us other girls weren’t even asked, and I’ll bet our legs are as pretty as yours. It’s just because you’ve got a sort of—of—well, I heard a man call it ‘sex-appeal’ about you, but you’re foolish to throw away your good chances, and by and by they won’t come to you. You’ll be fat and ugly.”

I said:

“Oh, Lil, stop it. I guess I know my business better than you do.”

“Well, then, answer me this,” said Lil, sitting up in bed, “are you engaged to that fellow who sends you letters every day?”

I could not answer her.

“Well, what about Reggie Bertie?”

“For heaven’s sakes, go to sleep,” I entreated her, and with a grunt of disgust she at last turned over.

Next morning Paul’s letter fully decided me. It said that he would be at the station to meet me! He was expecting me, and I must not, on any account, fail him.

“Lil, wake up! Wake up!” I cried, shaking her by the arm. “I’m going to take the first train back to New York.”

Lil answered sleepily:

“Marion, you always were crazy.”

All of a sudden the room turned red on all sides of us, and I realized that it was on fire. The little stove had a pipe with an elbow in the wall, and when I put a match to the kindling, the flames must have crept up to the thin wooden walls from the elbow, and in an instant the wall had ignited. I had on only a nightdress. I seized the quilt off the bed, and threw it on the flames, but it seemed only to serve as fresh fuel. Lil was

And both shrieking we ran out into the hall.

crouched back on the bed, petrified with terror, and literally unable to move. Desperately screaming, “Fire, fire!” I seized the pitcher and flung it at the flames, and then somehow I grabbed hold of Lil by the hand, and both shrieking, we ran out into the hall. Then I fainted. When I came to, the fire was out, and the landlady and her son and husband and Lil were all standing over me, laughing and crying.

“Well,” said the man, “did you try to burn us out?” He turned to his wife, and said: “It’s a good job I got that insurance, eh?”

My clothes were not burned, but soaking wet, and so I missed my train—the train that Paul was going to meet.

OH, how good it was to enter New York once more! I remembered how ugly the city had looked to me that first time when I had come from Boston. Now even the rows of flat houses and dingy tall buildings seemed to take on a sturdy and friendly beauty.

Paul was walking up and down the station, and he came rushing up to me, as I came through the gates. He was pale, and even seemed to tremble, as he caught me by the arm and cried:

“When you did not come on that train, I was afraid you had changed your mind, and were not coming back to me. I’ve been waiting here all day, watching each train that arrived from Providence. Oh, sweetheart, I’ve been nearly crazy!”

I told him about the fire, and he seized hold of my hands, and examined them.

“Don’t tell me youhurtyourself!” he cried. And when I reassured him, it was all I could do to keep him from hugging me right there in the station. All the way on the car he held my hand, and although he did not say anything at all tome, I knew just what was in his heart. He loved me, and nothing else in all the whole wide world mattered.

He had helped me out at the studio building, and now as I went up the old rickety stairs, I realized that this wasmy home!

It was a ramshackle, very old, neglected, rickety sort of place, and I do not know why they called it Paresis Row. The name did not sound ugly to me, somehow. I loved everything about the place, even the queer business carried on on the lower floors, and old Mary, the slatternly caretaker, who scolded the boys alternately and then did little kindnesses for them. I remember how once she kept a creditor away from poor Fisher, by waving her broom at him, till he fled in fear.

I laughed as we went by the door of that crazy old artist that the boys used to tease by dropping a piece of iron on the floor after holding it up high. They would wait a few minutes, and then he would come hobbling up the stairs. There would be three regular taps, and then he would put his head in and say:

“Gentlemen, methinks I heard a noise!”

On the first floor back a man taught singing, and he had gotten up a class of policemen. It seemed as if they sang forever the chorus of a song that went like this:

“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, don’t be a-f-rai-d!”

Several artists had committed suicide in the building. I am not sure of the causes, and we never dwelt upon the reasons. There was nothing pretty about the place; it was cold and not even very clean; but—it was myhome!

Paul opened the door of his studio. The place was all cleaned up and new paper on the walls. He showed me behind the screen a little gas stove, pots and pans hanging at the back of it, and dishes in a little closet. Then, taking me by the hand, he opened a door, and showed me a little room adjoining his studio. It seemed to me lovely. It was prepared in soft gray, and the curtains of yellow cheesecloth gave an appearance of sunlight to it. There were several pieces of new furniture in the room, and a little mission dresser. Paul opened the drawers, and rather shyly showed me some sheets, pillow slips and towels, which he said he had purchased for me, and added:

“I hope they are all right. I don’t know much about such things.”

I knew then that Paul intended the room to be for me. He had only the one studio room before.

“Well, little mouse,” he said, “are you afraidto live with a poor beggar, or do you love me enough to take the chance?”

Thoughts were rushing through my mind. Memories of conversations and stories among the artists, on the marriage question, by some considered unnecessary and somehow with Paul it seemed right and natural, and the primitive woman in me answered: “Why not? Others have lived with the man they loved without marriage. Why should not I?” He was waiting for me to speak, and I put my hands up on his shoulders, and said:

“Oh, yes, Paul, I will come to you! I will!”

A little later, I said:

“Now I must go over to my old room and have my trunk and some other things I left there brought over, and I must tell Mrs. Whitehouse, the landlady, as she expects me back to-day.”

“Well, don’t be long,” said Paul. “I’m afraid you will slip through my arms just as I have found you.”

Mrs. Whitehouse, the landlady, met me at the door. I told her I was going to move over to Fourteenth Street, to Paresis Row. She threw up her hands and exclaimed:

“Lands sakes! That is no place for a girl to live, and I have no use for them artists. They are a half-crazy lot, and never have a cent to bless themselves with. If I were a young andpretty girl like you, Miss Ascough, I would not waste my time on the likes of them. Now there’s been a fine-looking gent calling for you the last two days, and I told him you’d be back to-day. He’s a real swell, and if you’d take my advice, you’d get right next to him.”

Even as she spoke the front doorbell rang. She opened the door, and there was Reggie! I was standing at the bottom of the stairs, but when I saw him, I fled into the parlor. He came after me, with his arms outstretched. I found myself staring across at him, as if I were looking at a stranger.

“Marion,” he cried, “I’ve come to bring you home.”

I backed away from him.

“No, no, Reggie, I don’t want you to touch me,” I said. “Go away! I tell you go away!”

“You don’t understand,” said Reggie. “I’ve come to take you home. You’ve won out. I’m going tomarryyou!”

He looked as if he were conferring a kingdom on me.

“Listen to me, Reggie,” I said. “I can never, never be your wife now.”

“Why not? What have you done?” His old anger and suspicion were mounting. He was looking at me lovingly, yet furiously.

“I’ve done nothing—nothing—but I cannot be your wife.”

“If you mean because of Boston—I’ve forgiven everything. I fought it all out in Montreal and I made up my mind that I had to have you. So I’m going tomarryyou, darling. You don’t seem to understand.”

Further and further away I had backed from him, but now he was right before me. I looked up at Reggie, but a vision arose between us— Paul Bonnat’s face. Paul who was waiting for me, who had offered to share his all with me, and somehow it seemed to me more immoral to marry Reggie than to live with the man I loved.

“Reggie Bertie,” I said, “it’s you who don’t understand. I can never be your wife because—because—” Oh, it was very hard to drive that look of love and longing from Reggie’s face. Once I had loved him, and although he had hurt me so cruelly in the past, in that moment I longed to spare him the pain that was to be his now.

“Well? What is it, Marion? What have you done?”

“Reggie, it’s this: I no longer love you!” I said.

There was silence, and then he said with an uneasy laugh:

“You don’t mean that. You are angry with me. I’ll soon make you love me again as you did once, Marion. You’ll do it when you are my wife.”

“No—no—I never will,” I said steadily, “because—because—there’s another reason, Reggie. There’s some one else, some one who loves me, and whom Iadore!”

I hope I may never see a man look like Reggie did then. He had turned gray, even to his lips. He just stared at me, and I think the truth of what I had said slowly sank in upon him. He drew back.

“I hope you’ll be happy!” he said, and I replied:

“Oh, and I hope you will be, too.”

I followed him to the door and he kept on staring at me with that dazed and incredulous look upon his face. Then he went out and I closed the door forever on Reggie Bertie.

* * * * * *

The expressman had just put my trunk in the studio. I opened the door of the little room that Paul had fixed up for me.

“Are you afraid, darling?” he asked. “Are you going to regret giving yourself to a poor devil like me?”

I answered him as steadily as my voice would let me, for I was trembling.

“I am yours as long as you love me, Paul.”

I had started to remove my hat.

“Not yet, darling,” said Paul, and he took me by the arm and guided me toward the door. “First we have to go to the ‘Little Church Around the Corner.’”

THE END.

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