said shortly and with decision: "We must go on with this."

"To-morrow--could you come to-morrow at the same time?"

"I will," he said.

"Good. Are you hungry?"

But the legless man did not appear to have heard her. A sound in the adjoining room had arrested his attention. He listened to it critically and then smiled.

"A good workman," he said, "is turning a screw into wood."

"How clever of you," said Barbara. "There was a man coming from Schlemmer's to put on some glass knobs for me. Bubbles has brought him in by the back stairs."

The faint crunching sound of the screw going into the wood ceased. There was a knock on the door.

"Come in," said Barbara.

Bubbles appeared in the opening. "We're all through in here."

It did not at once strike Barbara that to have finished his work in the next room the man from Schlemmer's must have arrived upon the scene very much earlier than he had promised. And she could not by any possibility have guessed that Bubbles, in a state of nervous alarm, had slipped down the back stairs and run all the way to the hardware store to fetch him.

"He may as well begin in here, then," she said; "I'm through for this morning." And she turned to the beggar. "To-morrow--at the same time?"

He nodded briefly, but did not at once turn to go. He wished, it seemed, to have a good look at the young workman who now followed Bubbles into the studio. And so did Barbara, the moment she saw him.

To her critical eye he was quite the best-looking young man she had ever seen "in the world or out of it." He was tall, broad, round-necked, narrow in the hips, and of a fine brown coloring. He carried with easy grace a strong, well-massed head, to which the close adherence of the ears, and the shortness of the dark-brown shiny hair, gave an effect of high civilization and finish. Brown, level eyes, neither hard nor soft, but of a twinkling habit, a nose straight, thick, finely chiselled, an emphatic chin, and a large mouth of extraordinary 

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