'Perfect bear-cats. I remember my grandfather at the age of about a
hundred or something like that spanking me for breaking his pipe. I
thought it was a steam-hammer. He was a wonderfully muscular old
gentleman.'
'Excellent.'
'By the way,' said Kirk casually, 'my life is insured.'
'Very sensible. There has been no serious illness in your family at
all, then, as far as you know?'
'I could hunt up the records, if you like; but I don't think so.'
'Consumption? No? Cancer? No? As far as you are aware, nothing? Very
satisfactory.'
'I'm glad you're pleased.'
'Are you married?'
'Good Lord, no!'
'At your age you should be. With your magnificent physique and
remarkable record of health, it is your duty to the future of the race
to marry.'
'I'm not sure I've been worrying much about the future of the race.'
'No man does. It is the crying evil of the day, men's selfish
absorption in the present, their utter lack of a sense of duty with
regard to the future. Have you read my 'Dawn of Better Things'?'
'I'm afraid I read very few novels.'
'It is not a novel. It is a treatise on the need for implanting a sense
of personal duty to the future of the race in the modern young man.'
'It sounds a crackerjack. I must get it.'
'I will send you a copy. At the same time I will send you my
'Principles of Selection' and 'What of To-morrow?' They will make you
think.'
'I bet they will. Thank you very much.'
'And now,' said Mrs. Porter, switching the conversation to the gaping
George, 'you had better put this man to bed.'
George Pennicut's opinion of Mrs. Porter, to which he was destined to
adhere on closer acquaintance, may be recorded.
'A hawful woman, sir,' he whispered as Kirk bore him off.
'Nonsense, George,' said Kirk. 'One of the most entertaining ladies I
have ever met. Already I love her like a son. But how she escaped from
Bloomingdale beats me. There's been carelessness somewhere.'
The bedrooms attached to the studio opened off the gallery that ran the
length of the east wall. Looking over the edge of the gallery before
coming downstairs Kirk perceived his visitor engaged in a tour of the
studio. At that moment she was examining his masterpiece, 'Ariadne in
Naxos.' He had called it that because that was what it had turned into.
At the beginning he had had no definite opinion as to its identity. It
was rather a habit with his pictures to start out in a vague spirit of
adventure and receive their label on completion. He had an airy and a
dashing way in his dealings with the goddess Art.
Nevertheless, he had sufficient of the artist soul to resent the fact
that Mrs. Porter was standing a great deal too close to the masterpiece
to get its full value.
'You want to stand back a little,' he suggested over the rail.
