“Very much.  Can you find out?”

“I think so.  I mean, I’m sure I can.”

“And when you have found him will you point out to him that in the future he must be open and above-board, or something disagreeable will be done to him?”

Mr. West bowed humbly.

“How long,” she asked, “will it take you to run the creature down?”

“Well,” said Mr. West, “I could go to the florist whose name is on the box, show my badge, and exact a description of the man who bought the flowers.  Then I could give you the description, and if you knew any such man—­”

“The florist,” said Barbara, her expression Sphinx-like, “is just ’round the corner.”

“I hear,” said Mr. West, “and I obey.”

“I will read a book till you come back,” said Barbara.

But she didn’t read a book; she leaned instead from a window and watched for Mr. West to come out of the studio-building.  He came presently, but did not turn east in search of the florist.  Neither did he descend the steps.  Instead, he took out his watch and sat down, and waited.  Barbara in great glee watched him for ten minutes.  She was possessed of a devilish longing to fashion out of paper a small water-bomb and drop it on his head.  Memories of water-bombs brought up memories of Wilmot Allen and old days.  She drew back from the window and was no longer gleeful.  Why should men trouble her heart, since she wished and had elected to live, not a woman’s life but a man’s?  She paced the studio, her soul at odds with the rest of her.

Had she ever encouraged Wilmot?  Yes.  West?  Yes.  And about a dozen others.  And here she struck her left palm with her right fist.  She had even encouraged a man who had committed all the crimes in the calendar and was only half a man at that!  Half a man?  She was not sure.  There was a certain compelling force about him which at times made him seem more of a man to her than all the rest of them put together.  “I can’t imagine him in love,” she thought.  “It’s really too revolting.  But if he was, I can imagine nothing that he would let stand in his way, I wonder if he is married.  And if he is I pity her.  And yet she could say to other women, ‘My husband is a man,’ and most of the women I know can’t say that.”

And she remembered her father’s perfectly ridiculous suggestion that perhaps the man so wronged by him had lifted his eyes to herself.  The idea no longer seemed ridiculous; but quite possible and equally dreadful.  She made up her mind that she would sacrifice her immediate chances of recognition and fame and tell the beggar to discontinue his visits.  Then she withdrew the cloth from her work, and it seemed to her that what she had made was alive and had about it a certain sublimity, and that to surrender now was beyond her strength.  She had a moment of exultation, and she thought:  “In a hundred years my body will be dust.  It doesn’t matter what becomes of it now or hereafter; but people will gather in front of this head, and artists will come from all over the world to see it.  And there will be plaster casts of it in city museums and village libraries.  And I suppose I’m the most conceited idiot in the world, but—­but it’s good.  I know it’s good!”