Carson had some reputation for his pictures. There was one, a Sargent, a portrait of the protagonist in this little drama of success, that hung in a recess of the hall at the foot of the stairs. R. Gordon Carson, as the great psychologist had seen him, was a striking person, an embodiment of modern waywardness, an outcropping of the trivial and vulgar. In a sacque coat, with the negligent lounging air of the hotel foyer, he stared at you, this Mr. R. Gordon Carson, impudently almost, very much at his ease. Narrow head, high forehead, thin hair, large eyes, a great protruding nose, a thin chin, smooth-shaven, yet with a bristly complexion,--there he was, the man from an Iowa farm, the man from the Sioux Falls court-house, the man from Omaha, the man now fully ripe from Chicago. Here was no class, no race, nothing in order; a feature picked up here, another there, a third developed, a fourth dormant--the whole memorable but unforgivably ordinary. Not far away, standing in the doorway of the next room, was Carson himself. The great painter had undressed him and revealed him. What a comment to hang in one's own home! The abiding impression of the portrait was self-assurance; hasty criticism would have called it conceit. All the deeper qualities of humanity were rubbed out for the sake of this one great expression of egotism. When the lecture was finished, a little group formed about the host; he was telling his experience with the great master, a series of anecdotes that had made his way in circles where success was not enough. "I knew he was a hard customer," Sommers overheard him saying, "and I gave him all the rope he wanted. 'It may be two years before I do anything on your portrait, Mr. Carson,' he said. "'Take five,' I told him. "'I shall charge five thousand.' "'Make it ten,' said I. "'I shall paint your ears.' "'And the nose too.' "Well, he sent it to me inside of a year with his compliments. The fancy struck him, he wrote. It was easy to do; I was a good type and all that. Well, there it is." He turned on an additional bunch of electric lights before the picture. "Good, isn't it?" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed behind Sommers. "Too good," he muttered. "I shouldn't have dared to hang it." The girl's smooth brow contracted. "Don't you think it was fine, though, his making up his mind out there in Sioux Falls that what he wanted was pictures, and the best pictures, and that he'd have Sargent do his portrait?" "No more than it's fine for all the rest of these well-dressed men and women to make up their minds that they want to be rich and luxurious and important and all that." Her face became still more puzzled. "But it is fine! And the successful people are the interesting people." "That has nothing to do with the matter," he returned dogmatically.