and admiration of how the world is made.  Look at it in this way.  She makes a great hit with the bust.  Who’s responsible?  Well, the creature that supplied the inspiration, largely.  She’ll feel gratitude.  He’ll take advantage of anything that comes his way.  And frankly, Dr. Ferris, I may be making a mountain out of a mole-hill, but I’m worried to death.  Suppose I told you that, say, Duane Carter spent hours every day in Barbara’s studio?”

Dr. Ferris jumped to his feet, white with anger.  “Do you mean to tell me that my daughter is friendly with that person?”

“Oh, no,” said Allen calmly.  “I think Barbara’s new friend is a very much more dangerous person for her to know.  Whatever Duane Carter is he wouldn’t dare.  This other man—­”

“Look here, Wilmot”—­Dr. Ferris began to pace the room in considerable agitation—­“you’re an old friend of Barbara’s.  Is friendliness at the root of your worry, or is it some other feeling, not so disinterested as friendship?”

Wilmot Allen rose to his full height, and Dr. Ferris paused in his pacings.  They faced each other.

“If I was any good,” said the young man slowly, “if I had any money, if Barbara would have me, I’d marry her to-morrow.  But I’m not any good—­never was.  I haven’t any money, hardly ever have had, and Barbara would no more have me of her own free will than she’d take a hammer and smash the bust she’s making.  So much for motives.  Have I disposed of jealousy?”

Dr. Ferris nodded.

“The man,” said Allen, “isn’t a man.  He’s a gutter-dog, a gargoyle, half a man.  And his position in the city—­in the whole country, I think—­is so fortified that with the best will in the world the law cannot touch him.  Duane Carter—­well, he’s been a gay boy with the ladies—­a bad man if you like—­but at least he is not accused by gossip of murder, arson, abduction, and crimes infinitely worse than these.  He may have beguiled women, but at least his worst enemy would never suppose that he had trafficked in them.  Barbara’s model is all the things that you can imagine.  And all of them are written in his horrible face.  To see them together, friendly, reparteeing, chummy, would turn your stomach—­Barbara so exquisite and high-born, and the man, his eyes full of evil fires, sitting like a great toad on the model’s chair.  And at that—­good God, you might stand it, if he was a whole man!  But he isn’t.  It’s horrible!  He has no legs—­and you want to stamp on him till he’s dead.”

Dr. Ferris had turned white as a sheet.  “To me,” he said quietly, “that is the most horrible form of mutilation.  I can’t tell you why.  It is so.  And you will believe that in my practice I have encountered all sorts.  But who is he?”

“He’s a man named Blizzard—­he passes for a beggar, grinds an organ, sells shoe-laces and that sort of thing.  As a matter of fact, he’s very well off, if not rich.  Why don’t you visit Barbara’s studio to-morrow, look things over, and put a stop to it?  You can say things to Barbara that I can’t, that no young man can say to a girl.  Go as far as you like.  Whatever you tell her about him will be true even if you can’t prove it.  You can make her see what thin ice she’s skating on.  Or if you can’t nobody can.”