does one youth with a vernal proboscis convince a skeptical public that it is enjoying the fearful companionship of a subversive and revolutionary cult.  Patronage ebbed out as fast as it had flooded in.  Barbran’s eyes were as soft and happy as ever in the evenings, when she and Phil sat in a less and less interrupted solitude.  But in the mornings palpable fear stalked her.  Phil never saw it.  He was preoccupied with a dread of his own.

One evening of howling wind and hammering rain, when all was cosy and home-like for two in the little firelit Wrightery, she nerved herself up to facing the facts.

“It’s going to be a failure,” she said dismally.

“Then you’re going away?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from quaking.

She set her little chin quite firmly.  “Not while there’s a chance left of pulling it out.”

“Well; it doesn’t matter as far as I’m concerned,” he muttered.  “I’m going away myself.”

“You?” She sat up very straight and startled.  “Where?”

“Kansas City.”

“Oh!  What for?”

“Do you remember a fat old grandpa who was here last month and came back to ask about the decorations?”

“Yes.”

“He’s built him a new house—­he calls it a mansion—­and he wants me to paint the music-room.  He likes”—­Phil gulped a little—­“my style of art.”

“Isn’t that great!” said Barbran in the voice of one giving three cheers for a funeral.  “How does he want his music-room decorated?”

Young Phil put his head in his hands.  “Scenes from Moody and Sankey,” he said in a muffled voice.

“Good gracious!  You aren’t going to do it?”

“I am,” retorted the other gloomily.  “It’s good money.”  Almost immediately he added, “Damn the money!”

“No; no; you mustn’t do that.  You must go, of course.  Would—­will it take long?”

“I’m not coming back.”

“I don’t want you not to come back,” said Barbran, in a queer, frightened voice.  She put out her hand to him and hastily withdrew it.

He said desperately:  “What’s the use?  I can’t sit here forever looking at you and—­and dreaming of—­of impossible things, and eating my heart out with my nose painted green.”

“The poor nose!” murmured Barbran.

With one of her home-laundered handkerchiefs dipped in turpentine, she gently rubbed it clean.  It then looked (as she said later in a feeble attempt to palliate her subsequent conduct) very pink and boyish and pathetic, but somehow faithful and reliable and altogether lovable.

So she kissed it.  Then she tried to run away.  The attempt failed.

It was not Barbran’s nose that got kissed next.  Nor, for that matter, was it young Phil’s.  Then he held her off and shut his eyes, for the untrammeled exercise of his reasoning powers, and again demanded of Barbran and the fates: 

“What’s the use?”

“What’s the use of what?” returned Barbran tremulously.