In that first moment of their meeting, she realized nothing about the man but the terribly moving expression of his face. Nothing else mattered. If her plastic training was equal to catching and fixing that expression in clay or marble, she would be made according to the mould of her ambition. The flame of art burned white and clear in the inmost shrine of her being. She saw before her, and beneath her, not a human being, but an inspiration. And since inspiration is a thing swift, electric, and trebly enticing from the fact that it presents itself shorn of all those difficulties which afterward, during execution, so terribly appear and multiply, her heart beat already with the exquisite bliss of an immortal achievement. In her vocabulary at that instant it would have been impossible to discover under B the aggressive But, or under I the faltering If. She was inspired. It was enough. Then she, in whose mind strong wings had suddenly sprouted, perceived that the person directly responsible had not even a pair of legs, and felt throughout her whole being a cold gushing of horror and revolt. This was not lost upon Blizzard. It was an ordinary enough human sensation, whose reflections had often enough given the iron that was in his soul another twist and refreshed in him vengefulness and hatred. Yet on the present occasion the knowledge that he was physically loathed roused in the man a feeling rather of that despair which may be experienced by the drowning at that precise moment when the straw so eagerly clutched has proved itself a straw, and he winced as beneath a shocking blow between the eyes. On discovering that the creature was maimed it had been Barbara's first impulse to pass swiftly on. But another glance at the face which had arrested her held her. She took some coins from her purse and dropped them into the tin cup which the beggar held out to her. And he looked upward into her face. "Did you ever pose for any one?" she asked. "Yes, miss." "I should like to make a bust of you. I'll see that it pays you better than--better than earning a living this way." For the first time Blizzard smiled. "Do you want me to come now?" he asked. "Yes," she said. "My studio is in No. 17 McBurney Place." Here she stopped upon a somewhat embarrassing thought. But the legless man read what was in her mind. "Two flights up?" he queried. "Three? I can climb. Don't trouble about that." "You will come as soon as you can?" "I have to meet a man here in half an hour. Then I'll come." "Please," she said, "ask for Miss Ferris." [Illustration: She took some coins from her purse and dropped them into the tin cup]