“There's nothing much--” he began; but he stopped at once, with an odd laugh. “Well, I sha'n't say _that_,” he finished, flinging open the door of his studio, and pressing a button that flooded the room with light. The next moment, as they stood before those plaques and panels and canvases--on each of which was a pictured “Billy”--they understood the change in his sentence, and they laughed appreciatively. “'Much,' indeed!” exclaimed William. “Oh, how lovely!” breathed Marie. “My grief and conscience, Bertram! All these--and of Billy? I knew you had a good many, but--” Aunt Hannah paused impotently, her eyes going from Bertram's face to the pictures again. “But how--when did you do them?” queried Marie. “Some of them from memory. More of them from life. A lot of them were just sketches that I did when she was here in the house four or five years ago,” answered Bertram; “like this, for instance.” And he pulled into a better light a picture of a laughing, dark-eyed girl holding against her cheek a small gray kitten, with alert, bright eyes. “The original and only Spunk,” he announced. “What a dear little cat!” cried Marie. “You should have seen it--in the flesh,” remarked Cyril, dryly. “No paint nor painter could imprison that untamed bit of Satanic mischief on any canvas that ever grew!” Everybody laughed--everybody but Billy. Billy, indeed, of them all, had been strangely silent ever since they entered the studio. She stood now a little apart. Her eyes were wide, and a bit frightened. Her fingers were twisting the corners of her handkerchief nervously. She was looking to the right and to the left, and everywhere she saw--herself. Sometimes it was her full face, sometimes her profile; sometimes there were only her eyes peeping from above a fan, or peering from out brown shadows of nothingness. Once it was merely the back of her head showing the mass of waving hair with its high lights of burnished bronze. Again it was still the back of her head with below it the bare, slender neck and the scarf-draped shoulders. In this picture the curve of a half-turned cheek showed plainly, and in the background was visible a hand holding four playing cards, at which the pictured girl was evidently looking. Sometimes it was a merry Billy with dancing eyes; sometimes a demure Billy with long lashes caressing a flushed cheek. Sometimes it was a wistful Billy with eyes that looked straight into yours with peculiar appeal. But always it was--Billy. “There, I think the tilt of this chin is perfect.” It was Bertram speaking. Billy gave a sudden cry. Her face whitened. She stumbled forward. “No, no, Bertram, you--you didn't mean the--the tilt of the chin,” she faltered wildly. The man turned in amazement. “Why--Billy!” he stammered. “Billy, what is it?” The girl fell back at once. She tried to laugh lightly. She had seen the dismayed questioning in her lover's eyes, and in the eyes of William and the others.