As they passed out, she placed her hand on his arm, and looked up into his face admiringly.  “What a clever, clever man you are, to think of it!  And what a story it will make for the papers—­when my picture is shown—­how you were not satisfied with the portrait and refused to let it go—­and how, after keeping it in your studio for months, you repainted it, to satisfy your artistic conscience!”

Aaron King smiled.

The announcement in the house that the artist was to repaint Mrs. Taine’s picture, provoked characteristic comment.  Louise effervesced a frothy stream of bubbling exclamations.  James Rutlidge gave a hearty, “By Jove, old man, you have nerve!  If you can really improve on that canvas, you are a wonder.”  And Mr. Taine, under the watchful eye of his beautiful wife, responded with a husky whisper, “Quite right—­my boy—­quite right!  Certainly—­by all means—­if you feel that way about it—­” his consent and approval ending in a paroxysm of coughing that left him weak and breathless, and nearly eliminated him from the question, altogether.

When the Fairlands Heights party had departed, Conrad Lagrange looked the artist up and down.

“Well,”—­he growled harshly, in his most brutal tones,—­“what is it?  Is the dog returning to his vomit?—­or is the prodigal turning his back on his hogs and his husks?”

Aaron King smiled as he answered, “I think, rather, it’s the case of the blind beggar who sat by the roadside, helpless, until a certain Great Physician passed that way.”

And Conrad Lagrange understood.

Chapter XXVIII

You’re Ruined, My Boy

It was no light task to which Aaron King had set his hand.  He did not doubt what it would cost him.  Nor did Conrad Lagrange, as they talked together that evening, fail to point out clearly what it would mean to the artist, at the very beginning of his career, to fly thus rudely in the face of the providence that had chosen to serve him.  The world’s history of art and letters affords too many examples of men who, because they refused to pay court to the ruling cliques and circles of their little day, had seen the doors of recognition slammed in their faces; and who, even as they wrought their great works, had been forced to hear, as they toiled, the discordant yelpings of the self-appointed watchdogs of the halls of fame.  Nor did the artist question the final outcome,—­if only his work should be found worthy to endure,—­for the world’s history establishes, also, the truth—­that he who labors for a higher wage than an approving paragraph in the daily paper, may, in spite of the condemnation of the pretending rulers, live in the life of his race, long after the names to which he refused to bow are lost in the dust of their self-raised thrones.