He did not add that he continually put himself in the way of artists in
the hope that his fame as a model would reach Barbara, and touch her
imagination. He did not add that he haunted Washington Square and
McBurney Place, where her studio was, in the hope that his face, which
he knew to be different and more terrible than other faces, might kindle
a fire of inspiration in her. He believed rightly that if a woman once
looked him in the eyes she would never forget him. But hitherto Barbara
had not so much as glanced at him, since she carried her lovely head
very high, and looked straight before her as she went. While, as for
him, he stood upon the stumps of his legs, a gigantic sort of dwarf,
beneath the notice of the proud-eyed and the tall.

Wilmot passed out of the place in deep thought; not even the pretty
girls plaiting straw won a glance from him. Coupled with the relief of
being out of present difficulties was a disagreeable sense of
foreboding. Suppose the legless man were to ask favors of him before the
money could be repaid? Suppose they were favors which a gentleman could
not grant? And he determined to find out, from the police if necessary,
just what sort of a man it was with whom he had had dealings.




III


It seemed to Wilmot that he had not seen Barbara for an age. And indeed
a week had passed without their meeting. Therefore, although he had
often been forbidden to call during working hours, he had himself driven