“You are mistaken in me,” Frederick rejoined.  “I do nothing but blow soap bubbles.  Leave me to my illusion, that there is a great artist in me awaiting the moment of self-expression and development.  What I am really much more fitted for is to be Mr. Ritter’s coachman, or valet, or at best his business manager.”

XIV

Miss Burns took out her little purse, refusing to let Frederick pay for her, and they stepped out again into the busy streets.

“By Jove,” said Frederick, whose manner when in the hurly-burly changed completely, “what a lot of stuff I have been chattering!  I deserve to be punished for trying your patience to such an extent.  I must have bored you horribly.”

“Oh, no,” she said, “I am accustomed to such conversations.  I have associated with artists for many years.”

“Do you mean to impugn my truthfulness, Miss Burns?” Frederick asked in some alarm.

“No, but I think,” she said calmly, with almost masculine firmness, “that if nature makes us suffer through something, she does not intend us to suffer again and again from the same thing.  It seems to me the Creator had a definite intention in always and everywhere placing night and sleep between day and day.”

“Not always and not everywhere,” Frederick observed, thinking of the difficulty he had had for many nights in snatching a few hours’ sleep.

At a street crossing Miss Burns stopped to wait for a car to take her back to the studio.

“Look at that,” said Frederick, pointing to six similar placards of gigantic dimensions, which represented Mara, the Spider’s Victim, in screaming colours.  A green stripe was pasted slantwise on each placard, announcing that the dancer had been suffering from the consequences of the shipwreck, but that she would appear at Webster and Forster’s the next day for the first time in America.  Above the advertisement on the same wall were seven or eight full-length pictures of Arthur Stoss larger than life-size.

“Your little friend invited Mr. Ritter to a rehearsal in a theatre on Broadway day after to-morrow.  It was not Webster and Forster’s,” said Miss Burns.  Frederick explained what had happened in connection with Mr. Lilienfeld, though he himself had not known of the intended rehearsal.

“I feel nothing but pity for that girl,” he said lightly.  “As a result of a strange combination of circumstances, I feel I am responsible for her.  She lost her father, who was all in all to her, since she is not on good terms with her mother.”

“Indeed?” said Miss Burns.  “Why, this very morning in a short conversation in the studio, she told me something very different.”

“She did!” exclaimed Frederick.

“She told me that in many ways her father had been a fearful burden to her.  In the first place, she had to earn money for him, and then he tyrannised over her terribly.”