knew there, what an effect she would be with that look of hers, and that
beauty, all out of drawing! They would recognize the flame quality in
her. He imagined a joke about her being a fiery spirit, or nymph, naiad,
whatever, from one of her native gas-wells. He began to sketch on a bit
of paper from the table at his elbow vague lines that veiled and revealed
a level, dismal landscape, and a vast flame against an empty sky, and a
shape out of the flame that took on a likeness and floated detached from
it. The sketch ran up the left side of the sheet and stretched across
it. Beaton laughed out. Pretty good to let Fulkerson have that for the
cover of his first number! In black and red it would be effective; it
would catch the eye from the news-stands. He made a motion to throw it
on the fire, but held it back and slid it into the table-drawer, and
smoked on. He saw the dummy with the other sketch in the open drawer
which he had brought away from Fulkerson's in the morning and slipped in
there, and he took it out and looked at it. He made some criticisms in
line with his pencil on it, correcting the drawing here and there, and
then he respected it a little more, though he still smiled at the
feminine quality--a young lady quality.

In spite of his experience the night he called upon the Leightons, Beaton
could not believe that Alma no longer cared for him. She played at
having forgotten him admirably, but he knew that a few months before she
had been very mindful of him. He knew he had neglected them since they
came to New York, where he had led them to expect interest, if not
attention; but he was used to neglecting people, and he was somewhat less
used to being punished for it--punished and forgiven. He felt that Alma
had punished him so thoroughly that she ought to have been satisfied with
her work and to have forgiven him in her heart afterward. He bore no
resentment after the first tingling moments were-past; he rather admired
her for it; and he would have been ready to go back half an hour later