art among us the pangs of wounded vanity, which Alma had made him feel,
and he folded up his manuscript and put it in his pocket, almost healed
of his humiliation. He had been able to escape from its sting so
entirely while he was writing that the notion of making his life more and
more literary commended itself to him. As it was now evident that the
future was to be one of renunciation, of self-forgetting, an oblivion
tinged with bitterness, he formlessly reasoned in favor of reconsidering
his resolution against Fulkerson's offer. One must call it reasoning,
but it was rather that swift internal dramatization which constantly goes
on in persons of excitable sensibilities, and which now seemed to sweep
Beaton physically along toward the 'Every Other Week' office, and carried
his mind with lightning celerity on to a time when he should have given
that journal such quality and authority in matters of art as had never
been enjoyed by any in America before. With the prosperity which he made
attend his work he changed the character of the enterprise, and with
Fulkerson's enthusiastic support he gave the public an art journal of as
high grade as 'Les Lettres et les Arts', and very much that sort of
thing. All this involved now the unavailing regret of Alma Leighton, and
now his reconciliation with her they were married in Grace Church,
because Beaton had once seen a marriage there, and had intended to paint
a picture of it some time.

Nothing in these fervid fantasies prevented his responding with due
dryness to Fulkerson's cheery "Hello, old man!" when he found himself in
the building fitted up for the 'Every Other Week' office. Fulkerson's
room was back of the smaller one occupied by the bookkeeper; they had
been respectively the reception-room and dining-room of the little place
in its dwelling-house days, and they had been simply and tastefully
treated in their transformation into business purposes. The narrow old
trim of the doors and windows had been kept, and the quaintly ugly marble