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self to such mild fare, but exercised her matchless eyes on a troop of followers: the shock-haired pianist who accompanied her recitations, a straight-backed young American diplomatist whose collars seemed a part of his career, a lustrous South American millionaire, and a short squat Sicilian who designed the costumes for the pianist's unproduced ballets.

All these people appeared to believe intensely in each other's reality and importance; but it gradually came over Campton that all of them, excepting their host and hostess, knew that they were merely masquerading.

To Campton, used to the hard-working world of art, this playing at Bohemia seemed a nursery-game; but the scene acquired an unexpected solidity from the appearance in it, one day, of the banker Jorgenstein, who strolled in as naturally as if he had been dropping into Campton's studio to enquire into the progress of his own portrait.

"I must come and look you up, Campton—get you to finish me," he said jovially, tapping his fat boot with a malacca stick as he looked over the painter's head at the canvas on which Mrs. Talkett's restless image seemed to flutter like a butterfly impaled.

"You'll owe it to me if he does you," the sitter declared, smiling back at the leer which Campton divined behind his shoulder; and he felt a sudden pity for her innocence.