prove herself an imaginative artist, and in the next "to chuck the whole
business." But she could not make up her mind whether it is worse for a
captain to wait for actual defeat or, having perceived its
inevitability, to surrender. To go down with colors flying appeals
perhaps to noble sides of man; but it is a waste of ships, lives,
and treasure.

Passing swiftly down the avenue, she did not know whether, upon arriving
at her studio in McBurney Place, she should get into her working-apron
or make an end, once and for all, of artistic pursuits. But with the
lifting of the legless beggar's face to hers, all doubts vanished from
her mind like smoke from a room when the windows and doors are opened.
Whatever his face might have revealed to another, to her it was Satan's,
newly fallen, and she read into it a whole wonder of sin, tragedy,
desolation, and courage; and knew well that if she could reproduce what
she seemed to see, the world would be grateful to her. She would give it
a face which it would never make an end of discussing, which should be
in sculpture what the face of Mona Lisa is in painting. It would be the
face of a man whom one jury would hang upon the merest suspicion; for
whom another would return a verdict of "not guilty" no matter what the
nature of his proved crimes; and whether the face was beautiful or
hideous would be a matter of dispute for the ages.

Upon arriving at No. 17 McBurney Place, and having climbed two flights
of stairs, the door of her studio was opened before she could lay hand
to the knob, and a very small boy with very big eyes, and no more flesh
upon his bones than served to distinguish him from a living skeleton,
appeared on the threshold, smiling, you may say, from head to foot. He
was dressed in a blue suit with bobbed tails and a double row of bright
brass buttons down the front, and when she had gathered him from the