She whirled her muff over and over upon her two hands like the wheel of a squirrel cage, regarding it intently with her pretty head on one side. "No, I didn't imply it either. I don't believe I could be contented." "Not even with me?" She flushed, but evidently not with displeasure. "Why with you more than anybody else?" she softly inquired, with great apparent artlessness. "Because," he began, "I should"--He was going to add, "be so fond of you," but reflected that this was perhaps going a little too fast and too far, and concluded instead--"take such good care of you." Perhaps it was because approaching footsteps sounded on the stairs below them; perhaps it was because her subtile feminine sense appreciated the fact that he was on his guard; but for some reason or for no reason she tossed her head and rose to her feet. "I am fortunately not obliged to go so far as a desert island to get taken care of," she said. Her companion was not unwilling that the talk should be broken in upon. He smiled to himself as he followed her lead, and in a moment more he was knocking at the door of Fenton's studio, which was well up toward the roof. There was no response, and, as Fred rapped the second time, a carpenter who was at work on the casing of a door near by looked up, and said,-- "Mr. Fenton has a sitter, sir." "He is in then?" said Rangely. "Yes," answered John Stanton, straightening himself up, with his plane in his hand, "but since Mrs. Herman went in half an hour ago, he hasn't opened the door to anybody." "Mrs. Herman?" echoed Rangely, in astonishment. "Yes, sir." It was a capricious fate which brought John Stanton to tangle the web of Fenton's life. His brother Orin's relations with artists had given John a sort of acquaintanceship with them at second-hand, a kind of vicarious proprietorship in the privileges of art circles. He had long known Fenton by sight, while that he recognized Mrs. Herman also was the result of accident. He had been standing with Orin a few days before on a street corner, when the sculptor had lifted his hat to Mrs. Herman and named her in answer to John's question. There had not been in his honest mind the faintest tinge of suspicion when he saw her enter the studio, and he never had any intimation of the mischief he had clone in mentioning her name to Rangely.