he was profoundly thankful when it was packed up and removed from the
studio. But behind his thankfulness lurked the feeling that all was not
yet over, that there was worse to come.
It came.
It was heralded by a tearful telephone call from Miss Wilbur, who rang
up Ruth with the agitated information that 'Bailey didn't seem to like
it.' And on the heels of the message came Bailey in person, pink from
forehead to collar, and almost as wrathful as he had been on the great
occasion of his first visit to the studio. His annoyance robbed his
speech of its normal stateliness. He struck a colloquial note unusual
with him.
'I guess you know what I've come about,' he said.
He had found Kirk alone in the studio, as ill luck would have it. In
the absence of Ruth he ventured to speak more freely than he would have
done in her presence.
'It's an infernal outrage,' he went on. 'I've been stung, and you know
it.'
Kirk said nothing. His silence infuriated Bailey.
'It's the portrait I'm speaking about, the portrait, if you have the
nerve to call it that, of Miss Wilbur. I was against her sitting to you
from the first, but she insisted. Now she's sorry.'
'It's as bad as all that, is it?' said Kirk dully. He felt curiously
indisposed to fight. A listlessness had gripped him. He was even a
little sorry for Bailey. He saw his point of view and sympathized with
it.
'Yes,' said Bailey fiercely. 'It is, and you know it.'
Kirk nodded. Bailey was quite right. He did know it.
'It's a joke,' went on Bailey shrilly. 'I can't hang it up. People
would laugh at it. And to think that I paid you all that money for it.
I could have got a real artist for half the price.'
'That is easily remedied,' said Kirk. 'I will send you a cheque
to-morrow.'
Bailey was not to be appeased. The venom of more than three years cried
out for utterance. He had always held definite views upon Kirk, and
Heaven had sent him the opportunity of expressing them.
'Yes, I dare say,' he said contemptuously. 'That would settle the whole
thing, wouldn't it? What do you think you are; a millionaire? Talking
as if that amount of money made no difference to you? Where does my
sister come in? How about Ruth? You sneak her away from her home and
then......-'
Kirk's lethargy left him. He flushed.
'I think that will be about all, Bannister?' he said. He spoke quietly,
but his voice trembled.
But Bailey's long-dammed hatred, having at last found an outlet, was
not to be checked in a moment.
'Will it? Will it? The hell it will. Let me tell you that I came here
to talk straight to you, and I'm going to do it. It's about time you
had your darned dime-novel romance shown up to you the way it strikes
somebody else. You think you're a tremendous dashing twentieth-century
