“I think,” said Wilmot, “that if you’ve got that kind of a man sitting for you, you’ll need all the reputation you can get.  You talk of him with the same sort of enthusiasm that a bird would show in describing being fascinated by a snake.”

Barbara considered this judicially.  “Do you know,” she agreed, “it is rather like that.  He fascinates me, and at the same time I never saw a brute I hated so.  He must be wicked to deserve such pain.”

“Oh, he suffers, does he?”

“Of course.  Wouldn’t you suffer every minute of your life if you had no legs?”

Barbara, intent upon what was on her plate, did not perceive the sudden astonished darkening of Wilmot Allen’s face, nor that the interest which he had hitherto only feigned in her new model had become genuine.

“What is he?”

“I was going to say ‘just a beggar,’” said Barbara.  “But he isn’t just a beggar.  I’ve gathered that he’s rather well off, and that he’s one of the powers on the East Side.  And he looks money and power, even if he doesn’t talk them.”

“Is his name by any chance Blizzard?”

She looked up in astonishment “How did you know?”

“Oh,” he said cheerfully, “I’ve knocked about the city and known all sorts of curious people, and heard about others.  So Blizzard’s your new model.  Now look here, Barbara, are we old friends, or aren’t we?”

“Very old friends,” she said.

“Then let me tell you that you’re a little fool to have anything to do with a man like that.  You can’t touch pitch, you know, and—­”

“I only touch him with a pair of compasses,” she interrupted sweetly.

“Don’t quibble,” said Allen with energy; “it’s not like you.  That man is so bad, so unsavory, so vile, that you simply mustn’t have him about.  He’s dangerous.”

“So is a volcano,” said Barbara, “but there’s no reason why the most innocent bread-and-butter miss shouldn’t paint a picture of a volcano if she felt inspired.”

“I see that there’s only one thing to do.  I shall tell your father.”

Wilmot Allen was genuinely troubled.  And Barbara laughed at him.

“I’m not a child,” she said.

“That’s just it,” said he; “that’s why you ought to be ashamed of yourself.  And anyway you are a child.  All girls say they aren’t until they get into a mess of some sort, and then they excuse themselves to themselves and everybody else by protesting that they were.  ’I was so young.  I didn’t know,’ and all that rot.”

“Blizzard,” said Barbara, “is quiet, polite, and a good talker.  He comes, he sits for me, and he goes away.”

The butler having left the room, Wilmot fixed his rather tired eyes on Barbara’s face, and spoke with a certain earnest tenderness.  “Barbs,” he said, “take it from me, happiness doesn’t lie where you think it does.  I think the very highest achievements of the very greatest artists haven’t brought happiness.  Look here, old dear; put a limit to your ambition.  Say that by a certain date you’ll either succeed and quit, or fail and quit, and then see if you can’t take a little more interest in your own people, in your own heart—­even in me.”