No—I am a toiler in Bleecker Street, of its reeking pavements, its fly-infested purlieus, where the Italian children grub and shout and sun themselves in the gutters, in the air of a thousand smells throbbing under the noonday sun. The homecoming to the third-rate suburb used to be refreshing and soothing like a delicate perfume. To see the children laughing and rosy in the square inch of garden, to see Alicia, sparkling with her young energy and enthusiasm,—it had all been like coming into a cool temple filled with shapes of beauty, after wandering in some fetid bazaar. Now it is dust and ashes. I could never convey to Dibdin or to any one else how alone I feel in the world, what chill and cutting blasts of desolation sweep into my life every time I think of its present or its future. Minot Blackden came in to Visconti’s at noon to-day to drag me out to lunch. "Let’s stop in at my studio for a minute," he proposed as he steered me round a corner. "Something for you to see." He showed me a small rose window designed for some church in Cincinnati and turned expectantly to catch my exclamations. I gasped out some inanities. "Art, my boy!" he gloated. "That’s art for you!" "It is, indeed!" I assented helplessly. "Only surprising thing is how a real artist can acquire so much fame. Seems to me I see something about you in every Sunday newspaper I take up." "Ah, that’s business instinct," he chuckled. "I am no amateur, I can tell you. I live this thing. You may think it insane, but sometimes I think I am Benvenuto Cellini reincarnated." He was not laughing; he was in deadly earnest. "Come in," he added solemnly, directing me to a door in the rear of his shop. "I want to introduce you to my press agent." I was duly introduced to a plain bustling Mrs. Smith of perhaps thirty-five, who rose from a typewriter and spoke with a devotional, a reverential fervor of "our work", while casting worshipful glances at the artist. How do the Minot Blackdens inspire such adoration? I know I have rediscovered no lost art and it is plain I am no incarnation of Benvenuto Cellini. No one will ever worship me. "Have you seen Miss Bayard lately?" Blackden inquired as we sat down to an Italian luncheon, beginning with sardines and red pepper. "No—I haven’t," I answered, surprised. "Do you know her?" "Do I know her! Don’t you remember introducing us in front of Brentano’s?" I had forgotten it, and it seemed to hurt him that I did not regard his movements and events with the devotional attention of his press agent. "Of course," I murmured lamely. "You’ve seen her again?" He smiled a detached, superior smile such as the immortals might smile over erring, unregenerate humans, and ran his fingers through his dark, artistic hair.