"If you could paint that smile of hers, Brandy, you'd make Romney look like an amateur. Most wonderful smile. It's a splendid idea.

Let her laugh in your face, as you say; then paint like the devil while she's doing it, and your reputation is made for--"

"Will you have another drink?"

"No, thanks. I can change the subject without it. What time is it?"

Both looked at their watches, and put them back again without remark to resume the interrupted contemplation of Fifth Avenue in the waning light of a drab, drizzly day. A man in a shiny "slicker"

was pushing a sweep and shovel in the centre of the thoroughfare.

They wondered how long it would be before a motor struck him.

Brandon Booth was of an old Philadelphia family: an old and wealthy family. Both views considered, he was qualified to walk hand in glove with the fastidious Wrandalls. Leslie's mother was charmed with him because she was also the mother of Vivian. The fact that he went in for portrait painting and seemed averse to subsisting on the generosity of his father, preferring to live by his talent, in no way operated against him, so far as Mrs. Wrandall was concerned.

That was HIS lookout, not hers; if he elected to that sort of thing, all well and good. He could afford to be eccentric; there remained, in the perspective he scorned, the bulk of a huge fortune to offset whatever idiosyncrasies he might choose to cultivate.

Some day, in spite of himself, she contended serenely, he would be very, very rich. What could be more desirable than fame, family and fortune all heaped together and thrust upon one exceedingly interesting and handsome young man? For he would be famous, she was sure of it. Every one said that of him, even the critics, although she didn't have much use for critics, retaining opinions of her own that seldom agreed with theirs. It was enough for her that he was a Booth, and knew how to behave in a drawing-room, because he belonged there and was not lugged in by the scruff of an ill-fitting dress-suit to pose as a Bohemian celebrity. Moreover, he was a level-headed, well-balanced fellow in spite of his calling; which was saying a great deal, proclaimed the mother of Vivian in opposition to her own argument that painters never made satisfactory or even satisfying husbands: the artistic temperament and all that sort of thing getting in the way of compatibility.

He had been the pupil of celebrated draughtsmen and painters in Europe, and had exhibited a sincerity of purpose that was surprising, all things considered. The mere fact that he was not obliged to paint in order to obtain a living, was sufficient cause for wonder among the artists he met and studied with or under. At first they regarded him as a youth with a fancy that soon would pa.s.s, leaving him high and dry and safe on something steadier than Art. They couldn't understand a rich man's son really having aspirations, although they granted him temperament and ability. But he went about it so earnestly, so systematically, that they were compelled to alter the time-honoured tune and to sing praises instead of whistling their insulting "I-told-you-sos." To the disgust of many, he had a real purpose supported by talent, and that was what they couldn't understand in a rich man's son. They hated to see their traditions spoiled. The only way in which they could account for it all was that he was an American, and Americans are always doing the things one doesn't expect them to do, especially along grooves that ought to be kept closed by tradition.

When he said good-bye to his European friends and masters, and set his face toward home, they took off their hats to him, so to speak, and agreed that he had a brilliant future, without a thought of the legacy that one day would be his.

His studio in New York was not a fashionable resting place. It was a work-shop. You could have tea there, of course, and you were sure to meet people you knew and liked, but it was quite as much of a work-shop as any you could mention. He was not a dabbler in art, not a mere dauber of pigments: he was an ARTIST. People argued that because he was a thoroughbred and doomed to be rich, his conscious egotism would show itself at once in the demand for ridiculously high prices. In that they happily were fooled, not to say disappointed.

He began by painting the portrait of a well-known society woman of great wealth, who sat to him because she wanted to "take him up,"

and who was absolutely disconsolate when he announced, at the end of the sittings, that his price was five hundred dollars. She would not believe her ears.

"Why, my dear Brandon, you will be ruined--utterly ruined--if it becomes known that you ask less than five thousand," she had cried, almost in tears. "No one will come to you."

He had smiled. "A master's price is for a master, not for a tyro.

If they want to pay five thousand dollars for a portrait, I can recommend a dozen or more gentlemen whose work is worth it. Mine isn't. Some day I hope to be able to say five thousand with a great deal more a.s.surance than I now say five hundred, Mrs. Wheeler, but it won't be until I have courage, not nerve."

"But n.o.bODY will sit for a five hundred dollar portrait," she expostulated. "Really, Brandon, I prefer to pay five thousand. I can't--I simply cannot tell people that I paid only five--"

"Will you give six hundred?" he asked, his smile broadening.

"Absurd!"

"Seven hundred?"

"Why, it sounds as if you were jewing me up, not I trying to jew you down," she cried, dismayed.

"That's the point," he said, with mock gravity. "If my price isn't what it ought to be in your opinion, it is only fair that I should make concessions. My picture is worth five hundred dollars, but I am willing to do a little better than that by you. I will make it seven-fifty to you, but not a cent more."

"Can't I jew you up any higher, dear boy?"

"No," with a smile; "but if you will consent to sit to me ten years from now, I promise faithfully to ask five thousand of you without a blush."

"Ah, but ten years from now I should blush to even think of having my portrait painted."

"Ten years will make no change in you," said he gallantly, "but I expect them to make quite another artist of me."

And so his price was established for the time being. He offset the chilling effect of the low figure by deliberately declining commissions to paint women who fell below a rather severe standard of personal attractiveness. Gross women were not allowed to crowd his canvases; ugly ones who succeeded in tempting him were surprised to find how ugly they really were when the portrait was finished.

He made it a point never to lie about a woman, not even on canvas.

It made him very unpopular with certain ladies who wanted to be lied about--on canvas.

As the result of his rather independent att.i.tude, he had more commissions than he could fill. When it got about that he cared to paint only attractive women, his studio was besieged by ladies of a curious turn of mind. If they discovered that he was willing to paint them, they blissfully dropped the matter and went happily on their way. If they found that his time was so fully occupied that he could not paint them they urged him to reconsider--even offering to quadruple his price if he would only "do" them. One exceedingly plain woman, who couldn't be reconciled to Nature, offered him twenty thousand dollars if he would paint her for the Metropolitan Museum. Another asked him if he was a pupil of Gainsborough. Finding that he was not, she asked WHY not, with all the money he had at his command.

He had been in New York for the better part of two years at the time he is introduced into this narrative. Years of his life had been spent abroad, yet he was not a stranger in a strange land when he took up his residence in Gotham. Society opened its arms to him. It was like a home-coming. Had he been a bridge player, his coronation might have been complete.

Booth was thirty,--perhaps a year or two older; tall, dark and good-looking. The air of the thoroughbred marked him. He did not affect loose flowing cravats and baggy trousers, nor was he careless about his finger-nails. He was simply the ordinary, everyday sort of chap you would meet in Fifth Avenue during parade hours, and you would take a second look at him because of his face and manner but not on account of his dress. Some of his ancestors came over ahead of the Mayflower, but he did not gloat.

Leslie Wrandall was his closest friend and harshest critic. It didn't really matter to Booth what Leslie said of his paintings: he quite understood that he didn't know anything about them.

"When does Mrs. Wrandall return?" asked the painter, after a long period of silence spent in contemplation of the gleaming pavement beyond the club's window.

"That's queer," said Leslie, looking up. "I was thinking of Sara myself. She sails next week. I've had a letter asking me to open her house in the country. Her place is about two miles from father's.

It hasn't been opened in two years. Her father built it fifteen or twenty years ago, and left it to her when he died. She and Challis spent several summers there."

"Vivian took me through it one afternoon last summer."

"It must have been quite as much of a novelty to her as it was to you, old chap," said Leslie gloomily.

"What do you mean?"

"Vivian's a bit of a sn.o.b. She never liked the place because old man Gooch built it out of worsteds. She never went there."

"But the old man's been dead for years."

"That doesn't matter. The fact is, Vivian didn't quite take to Sara until after--well, until after Challis died. We're dreadful sn.o.bs, Brandy, the whole lot of us. Sara was quite good enough for a much better man than my brother. She really couldn't help the worsteds, you know. I'm very fond of her, and always have been. We're pals.

'Gad, it was a fearful slap at the home folks when Challis justified Sara by getting snuffed out the way he did."

Booth made an attempt to change the subject, but Wrandall got back to it.

"Since then we've all been exceedingly sweet on Sara. Not because we want to be, mind you, but because we're afraid she'll marry some chap who wouldn't be acceptable to us."

"I should consider that a very neat way out of it," said Booth coldly.

"Not at all. You see, Challis was fond of Sara, in spite of everything.

He left a will and under it she came in for all he had. As that includes a third interest in our extremely refined and irreproachable business, it would be a deuce of a trick on us if she married one of the common people and set him up amongst us, w.i.l.l.y-nilly. We don't want strange bed-fellows. We're too snug--and, I might say, too smug. Down in her heart, mother is saying to herself it would be just like Sara to get even with us by doing just that sort of a trick. Of course, Sara is rich enough without accepting a sou under the will, but she's a canny person. She hasn't handed it back to us on a silver platter, with thanks; still, on the other hand, she refuses to meddle. She makes us feel pretty small. She won't sell out to us. She just sits tight. That's what gets under the skin with mother."

"I wouldn't say that, Les, if I were in your place."

"It is a rather priggish thing to say, isn't it?"

"Rather."

"You see, I'm the only one who really took sides with Sara. I forget myself sometimes. She was such a brick, all those years."

Booth was silent for a moment, noting the reflective look in his companion's eyes.

"I suppose the police haven't given up the hope that sooner or later the--er--the woman will do something to give herself away,"

said he.