“Dearest,” she said, “I am serious. I know all this means to you. We’re human, and we don’t like to ‘chip at crusts like Hindus,’ even for the sake of youth and art. I never had illusions about love in a cottage and all that. Only, dear, I have been happy, so very happy, with you, because--well, because I was living in an atmosphere of honest purpose, honest ambition, and honest desire to do some good thing in the world. I had never known such an atmosphere before. At home, you know, father and Uncle James and the boys--well, it was all money, money, money with them, and they couldn’t understand why I--” “Could marry a poor newspaper artist! That’s just the point.” She put her hand to his lips. “Now, dear! If they couldn’t understand, so much the worse for them. If they thought it meant sacrifice to me, they were mistaken. I have been happy in this little flat; only--” she leaned back and inclined her head with her eyes asquint--“only the paper in this room is atrocious; it’s a typical landlord’s selection--McGaw picked it out. You see what it means to be merely rich.” She was so pretty thus that he kissed her, and then she went on: “And so, dear, if I didn’t seem to be as impressed and delighted as you hoped to find me, it is because I was thinking of Mr. Hardy and the poor, dear, common little _Post_, and then--of Mr. Clayton. Did you think of him?” “Yes.” “You’ll have to--to cartoon him?” “I suppose so.” The fact he had not allowed himself to face was close to both of them, and the subject was dropped until, just as he was going down-town--this time to break the news to Hardy--he went into the room he sarcastically said he might begin to call his studio, now that he was getting ten thousand a year, to look for a sketch he had promised Nolan for the sporting page. And there on his drawing-board was an unfinished cartoon, a drawing of the strong face of John Clayton. He had begun it a few days before to use on the occasion of Clayton’s renomination. It had been a labor of love, and Kittrell suddenly realized how good it was. He had put into it all of his belief in Clayton, all of his devotion to the cause for which Clayton toiled and sacrificed, and in the simple lines he experienced the artist’s ineffable felicity; he had shown how good, how noble, how true a man Clayton was. All at once he realized the sensation the cartoon would produce, how it would delight and hearten Clayton’s followers, how it would please Hardy, and how it would touch Clayton. It would be a tribute to the man and the friendship, but now a tribute broken, unfinished. Kittrell gazed a moment longer, and in that moment Edith came. “The dear, beautiful soul!” she exclaimed softly. “Neil, it is wonderful. It is not a cartoon; it is a portrait. It shows what you might do with a brush.” Kittrell could not speak, and he turned the drawing-board to the wall.