conclusion that this girl would be happier here in Brookhollow than scratching around the purlieus of New York to make both ends meet.

“It’s a tough deal,” he remarked abruptly. “—I mean this art stuff. You work like the dickens and kick your heels in ante-rooms. If they take your stuff they send you back to alter it or redraw it. I don’t know how anybody makes a living at it—in the beginning.”

“Don’t you?”

“I? No.” He reddened; but she could not notice it in the moonlight. “No,” he repeated; “I have an allowance from my father. I’m new at it yet.”

“Couldn’t a man—a girl—support herself by drawing 44 pictures for magazines?” she inquired tremulously.

44

“Oh, well, of course there are some who have arrived—and they manage to get on. Some even make wads, you know.”

“W-wads?” she repeated, mystified.

“I mean a lot of money. There’s that girl on the Star, Jean Throssel, who makes all kinds of wealth, they say, out of her spidery, filmy girls in ringlets and cheesecloth dinner gowns.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, Jean Throssel, and that Waythorne girl, Belinda Waythorne, you know—does all that stuff for The Looking Glass—futurist graft, no mouths on her people—she makes hers, I understand.”

It was rather difficult for Rue to follow him amid the vernacular mazes.

“Then, of course,” he continued, “men like Alexander Fairless and Philip Lightwood who imitates him, make fortunes out of their drawing. I could name a dozen, perhaps. But the rest—hard sledding, Miss Carew!”

“Is it very hard?”

“Well, I don’t know what on earth I’d do if dad didn’t back me as his fancy.”

“A father ought to, if he can afford it.”

“Oh, I’ll pay my way some day. It’s in me. I feel it; I know it. I’ll make plenty of money,” he assured her confidently.

“I’m sure you will.”

“Thank you,” he smiled. “My friends tell me I’ve got it in me. I have one friend in particular—the Princess Mistchenka—who has all kinds of confidence in my future. When I’m blue she bolsters me up. She’s quite wonderful. I owe her a lot for 

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