“Thank you for nothing,” snapped Isabel; and for five full minutes neither of them spoke. As usual, it was the man who finally made the overture toward peace. “How is the ‘Sunset in the Platte Cañon’ coming on?” he asked placably. “It is done--as much as anything of that kind ever is done.” “Shall we go in and look at it?” Isabel got out of the hammock rather reluctantly, and they tiptoed past the sleeper at the other end of the veranda. In the room which Isabel called her studio she uncovered a canvas on an easel and ran the shades up to get a better light. Antrim made a proper show of examining the picture, and was silent so long that she was moved to say, “Well?” with a sharp little upward inflection. “It’s no use,” he admitted good-naturedly. “You say I can’t criticise, and when I try, it only makes you angry.” “It is your duty to try, anyway. Besides, I am in a lovely temper to-day.” Antrim had his own opinion as to that, but he stood off and tried to imagine himself at the impossible point of view from which the picture was painted. Failing utterly in this, he drew up a chair and sat down to go over it patiently for small errors in detail. Isabel presently grew restive, knowing well from past experience what was coming. “It doesn’t seem to me that the station at Buck Creek looks just like that,” he said at length. “It’s a longer building than you have made it, and the platform comes out farther this way.” “Anything else?” asked the artist sweetly. “Yes; you have put two gondolas and a box car here on the side track. I don’t believe there ever were that many cars set out there at one time.” “How dreadfully unfortunate!” said Isabel, with well-simulated concern. “Yes, it is rather awkward. Can’t you paint one or two of them out? Then, you have put this switch stand on the wrong side of the track; the engineer couldn’t see that target until he got right up to it, and then he’d be in the ditch.” Isabel said, “Yes--go on”; and Antrim went on, glad enough to have found something which he was competent to criticise. “Then, these cars again: if you don’t paint them out you’d better paint them over. There are no high-sided gondolas on the narrow gauge, and no cars of any kind as big as these you have here.” It was unkind of Isabel to stand at the back of his chair where he could see none of the signs of the gathering storm, and there was no note of warning in her reply. “Do you really think they are too large?” “I don’t think; I know. And I’ll prove it to you,” said he, confidently, taking his pencil and a slip of paper, and making sundry measurements on the station building in the picture. “Now, see here: this is what I mean. If you have kept the proportions right on this building, it ought to be about six feet between these two marks. Using that for a scale, you see these cars are about twice as long as they ought to be. And when you come to the height----”