Oh, woman, in our hours of ease, what a double-faced hussy you are, anyway! Grace’s car went away--presumably home--but Grace stayed behind. She had left the street-door of the house ajar. She tiptoed up the stairs to the top floor, where her father and her lover were engaged in important private discourse. She came to a halt about three steps from the top, and perched in the dust with her golden-brown head on a level with the broad streak of light which marked the bottom of the studio door. A shameless eavesdropper, she listened greedily. First she heard her father’s voice: “I have heard your paintings praised highly by critics whose opinions I respect,” it said. “The fact that I myself fail to appreciate their merit is by no means to your discredit. I am not a connoisseur, and I am very old-fashioned in all my tastes. But I must say frankly that your success as a painter of ultramodern pictures scarcely seems to me to qualify you to marry my daughter.” She half hoped, half feared, that Edwin would say: “I love your daughter and she loves me. That makes our union necessary and right.” But instead he said, in a low, tense voice which she had never heard him use before: “But I may say without boasting that my art is not a failure, even financially. I have sold six paintings since last May, and the smallest check I received was for one hundred and twenty-five dollars.” “Indeed?” her father replied courteously. “I am glad to hear it, Mr. Marmaduke--very glad to hear it. I did not know that the public was sufficiently fond of these new and unusual forms of art to invest money in them. I see that I was wrong. But you must forgive me, Mr. Marmaduke, if I say that in my opinion the demand for--what is it you call them? I am getting old, and my memory is not what it was--ah, yes, thank you--the demand for Incomprehensiblist paintings is not likely to be of great duration. The public is fickle, sir; it has no use for last year’s novelties. Can you expect to invent new methods of painting yearly for its pleasure? You would have found it more profitable, in the long run, to paint in the traditional manner.” Edwin did not speak for several seconds. Then he said, with an air of deliberation: “No, Mr. Mallon. I think you are wrong. I tried painting in the traditional manner, and I made much less money than I am making now. Except for commercial work, the only sort of painting that pays to-day is--well, what you would call freak painting.” “Ah!” Grace heard her father say. “Exactly--except for commercial work! There is a field for a young man! I cannot blame you for being an idealist; but you wish to marry my daughter, and I confess that I should prefer to see her married to a successful commercial draftsman--say, an artist connected with some sound advertising agency--than to--well, to an Incomprehensiblist.” The listening girl smiled at her father’s words. Edwin Marmaduke and advertisements! It was an amusingly fantastic combination.