stimulating it, affixed it immortally on the exquisite creature he was
painting.

"So you didn't climb those twelve flights solely for the privilege of
having me paint you?"

"No," she admitted, laughingly, "I was merely going to begin at the top
and apply for work all the way down until somebody took me--or nobody
took me."

"But why begin at the top?"

"It is easier to bear disappointment going down," she said, seriously;
"if two or three artists had refused me on the first and second floors,
my legs would not have carried me up very far."

"Bad logic," he commented. "We mount by experience, using our wrecked
hopes as footholds."

"You don't know how much a girl can endure. There comes a time-after
years of steady descent--when misfortune and disappointment become
endurable; when hope deferred no longer sickens. It is in rising toward
better things that disappointments hurt most cruelly."

He turned his head in surprise; then went on painting:

"Your philosophy is the philosophy of submission."

"Do you call a struggle of years, submission?"