A hint of embarrassment emphasized the banker’s words as he began moving forward to show his visitor to the door. "I understand that she’s engaged as an artist’s model. That, too, ought to bring you in something." "I suppose Mr. Robert told you that, sir." This was inadvertent on Follett’s part, and a mistake. Any other distinguished man would have stiffened at the use of the name of a member of his family in a connection like the present one. Bradley Collingham was admirably temperate in saying: "I don’t talk of such matters with my son. I merely understood that your eldest girl was earning something—" "She poses six hours a week for Mr. Hubert Wray, at a dollar an hour." "She could probably get more engagements. I hear—I forget who told me—that she’s the type these artist people like to put into their pictures." Finding himself obliged to keep step with his employer, Follett felt as if he was walking to his soul’s dead-march. Only the force of the conventions in which everybody lives enabled him to go on making conversation. "We don’t much like the occupation for a daughter of ours, sir; and, besides, there’s lots who think that being an artist’s model isn’t respectable." "Still, if she can earn good money at it—" To Collingham’s relief, they were at the door, which he opened significantly and without more words. Follett looked into the outer world as represented by Miss Ruddick’s office as into an abyss. For the minute it seemed too awful a void to step into. When his watery blue eyes again sought Collingham’s face, it was with the dumb question, "Must I?" which the banker himself could only meet with Mr. Bickley’s manfulness. He, too, spoke only with his eyes: "You must, my poor Follett. There’s no help for it. You and I are both caught up into a vast machine. I can’t act otherwise than as I’m doing, and I know you don’t expect it." Thus Follett stepped over the threshold and the door closed behind him. So short a time had passed since he had gone the other way that Miss Ruddick was still beside her desk, putting away her papers. Follett didn’t look at her, but she looked at him, finding herself compelled to hark back to Mr. Bickley’s axioms to check the tears she couldn’t allow to rise. CHAPTER II Meanwhile there was that going on which would have disturbed both these elderly men had they known anything about it. Jennie Follett, in a Greek peplum of white-cotton cloth, her amber-colored hair drawn into a loose Greek knot, was on her knees before a plaster cast of Aphrodite, to which she was holding up a garland of tissue-paper flowers. While there was nothing alarming in this pagan act, the freedom with which two young men laid hands on her little person threw out hints of impropriety.