Marshby stiffened.  His head went up, his jaw tightened.  He looked the jealous ire of the male.

“What do you want me to stand here for?” he asked, irritably.

“But she refused me,” said Wilmer, cheerfully.  “Stand still, that’s a good fellow.  I’m using you.”

Marshby had by an effort pulled himself together.  He dismissed Mary from his mind, as he wished to drive her from the other man’s speech.

“I’ve been reading the morning paper on your exhibition,” he said, bringing out the journal from his pocket.  “They can’t say enough about you.”

“Oh, can’t they!  Well, the better for me.  What are they pleased to discover?”

“They say you see round corners and through deal boards.  Listen.”  He struck open the paper and read:  “’A man with a hidden crime upon his soul will do well to elude this greatest of modern magicians.  The man with a secret tells it the instant he sits down before Jerome Wilmer.  Wilmer does not paint faces, brows, hands.  He paints hopes, fears, and longings.  If we could, in our turn, get to the heart of his mystery!  If we could learn whether he says to himself:  “I see hate in that face, hypocrisy, greed.  I will paint them.  That man is not man, but cur.  He shall fawn on my canvas.”  Or does he paint through a kind of inspired carelessness, and as the line obeys the eye and hand, so does the emotion live in the line?’”

“Oh, gammon!” snapped Wilmer.

“Well, do you?” said Marshby, tossing the paper to the little table where Mary’s work-box stood.

“Do I what?  Spy and then paint, or paint and find I’ve spied?  Oh, I guess I plug along like any other decent workman.  When it comes to that, how do you write your essays?”

“I!  Oh!  That’s another pair of sleeves.  Your work is colossal.  I’m still on cherry-stones.”

“Well,” said Wilmer, with slow incisiveness, “you’ve accomplished one thing I’d sell my name for.  You’ve got Mary Brinsley bound to you so fast that neither lure nor lash can stir her.  I’ve tried it—­tried Paris even, the crudest bribe there is.  No good!  She won’t have me.”

At her name, Marshby straightened again, and there was fire in his eye.  Wilmer, sketching him in, seemed to gain distinct impulse from the pose, and worked the faster.

“Don’t move,” he ordered.  “There, that’s right.  So, you see, you’re the successful chap.  I’m the failure.  She won’t have me.”  There was such feeling in his tone that Marshby’s expression softened comprehendingly.  He understood a pain that prompted even such a man to rash avowal.

“I don’t believe we’d better speak of her,” he said, in awkward kindliness.

“I want to,” returned Wilmer.  “I want to tell you how lucky you are.”

Again that shade of introspective bitterness clouded Marshby’s face.  “Yes,” said he, involuntarily.  “But how about her?  Is she lucky?”

“Yes,” replied Jerome, steadily.  “She’s got what she wants.  She won’t worship you any the less because you don’t worship yourself.  That’s the mad way they have—­women.  It’s an awful challenge.  You’ve got a fight before you, if you don’t refuse it.”.