“With the good help of Gigi here, I made the thing for a lady, who doesn’t seem to want it, now it’s done. She’s been to Europe since she ordered it, and she’s gotten herself educated, so she thinks, to higher forms of art.” Perhaps I spoke a trifle bitterly. “What’s her fool name?” The Senator was still enkindled. I was surprised to see with what tenderness he was passing his fingers over the surface of that marble;—and he shouting the while as if we were all at a caucus! “Her name?” I hesitated, even then desiring to protect the name of beauty, and to pardon the grotesque shabbiness of that girl’s act in taking me at my word. “Let’s see. Oh, it was a Miss Chittenden, as I remember it. Just a chit from Missouri.” “Chittenden,” returned the Senator, with a puzzled air, “Chittenden?” Then a great light broke upon him. “Chittenden nothing! It’s Clarenden, that’s what it is. And if she told you anything else, she’s sailing under false pretences. Just like her, too!” “No, indeed,” I interposed, warmly, “I’m sure she wouldn’t do that—there must be something she’d draw the line at. Come to think of it, Clarenden _was_ the name she gave.” “A long young dame,” pursued Bullwinkle, “blue eyes, you know, and a way with her? Mariellen Clarenden?” I nodded. The Senator leaped in triumph. He turned upon me with the friendliest smile in the world. “What were you charging her?” “Four hundred dollars. And I don’t sell it for a cent less to anybody.” “Give you five hundred! Done!” The Senator snatched a checkbook and a fountain pen from the region of that waistcoat button we had lately wrangled over. I had no idea his motions could be so swift and so majestic. Perhaps I might have stayed his hand, in some effete idea of ethics, or professional etiquette; but Gigi’s inexorable eye was on me, dangling Mario before my hesitating soul. I compromised by taking the check, with vague thankfulness, and laying it on the table. I told myself I would think it over. It might be that five hundred dollars was not too much for a master-work, preferred above all Westminster Abbey. “You wonder at me,” the Senator went on, with a guffaw that was like a sob. “Well, then, sit up and wonder all you like. Sometimes I wonder at myself. This hand—” he stroked the marble with the same sort of reverence the girl had shown about that plaster cast. “Oh, hang it, boy, we’re all human, even if you are studio-bred-and-broke, God help you, and I’m from Missouri! Listen, kid. I had a sister, a twin sister. A smart Aleck like you would probably say it sounds like opera-buff, or a dime novel, but it’s just plain fact, right out of my own life. And I was fonder of that girl than of any other human being that ever lived. This necktie you’ve been fussing over because it’s too tight and hard, you said;—well, it’s black, for her. And black _is_ tight and hard, sometimes. Ah, well!” The Senator resolutely put away sadness, and again stretched out his own fine capable hand.