“I’m not sure I’ve been worrying much about the future of the race.” 

 “No man does. It is the crying evil of the day, men’s selfish absorption in the present, their utter lack of a sense of duty with regard to the future. Have you read my ‘Dawn of Better Things’?” 

 “I’m afraid I read very few novels.” 

 “It is not a novel. It is a treatise on the need for implanting a sense of personal duty to the future of the race in the modern young man.” 

 “It sounds a crackerjack. I must get it.” 

 “I will send you a copy. At the same time I will send you my ‘Principles of Selection’ and ‘What of To-morrow?’ They will make you think.” 

 “I bet they will. Thank you very much.” 

 “And now,” said Mrs. Porter, switching the conversation to the gaping George, “you had better put this man to bed.” 

 George Pennicut’s opinion of Mrs. Porter, to which he was destined to adhere on closer acquaintance, may be recorded. 

 “A hawful woman, sir,” he whispered as Kirk bore him off. 

 “Nonsense, George,” said Kirk. “One of the most entertaining ladies I have ever met. Already I love her like a son. But how she escaped from Bloomingdale beats me. There’s been carelessness somewhere.” 

 The bedrooms attached to the studio opened off the gallery that ran the length of the east wall. Looking over the edge of the gallery before coming downstairs Kirk perceived his visitor engaged in a tour of the studio. At that moment she was examining his masterpiece, “Ariadne in Naxos.” He had called it that because that was what it had turned into. 

 At the beginning he had had no definite opinion as to its identity. It was rather a habit with his pictures to start out in a vague spirit of adventure and receive their label on completion. He had an airy and a dashing way in his dealings with the goddess Art. 

 Nevertheless, he had sufficient of the artist soul to resent the fact that Mrs. Porter was standing a great deal too close to the masterpiece to get its full value. 

 “You want to stand back a little,” he suggested over the rail. 

 Mrs. Porter looked up. 

 “Oh, there you are!” she 

 Prev. P 11/231 next