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“To sell a picture?”

“I haven’t any. Those from the other side aren’t here yet. Anyhow, I’m going to show only American work.”

A long pause—an uncomfortable pause. Then she said in her artless, impersonal way: “I should think a wife would be of great assistance to an artist——”

“As a roper-in, you mean?” he interrupted fiercely. “No real painter would stoop to anything so degrading to his art and to himself.”

“Yet you’ve told me of all sorts of queer schemes you’ve put up to lure in buyers,” she said.

“An artist who marries is a fool—and worse,” said he sourly. “If he’s happily married his imagination is smothered to death. If he’s unhappily married it’s stabbed to death.”

She listened sweetly and patiently. “The subject of marriage is on my mind to-day,” said she with confiding and childlike innocence.

“It usually is on the minds of young girls,” said he, big and frowning.

“But my—my affairs are near the crisis,” proceeded she. “And one reason I came through the rain was that I wanted your advice.”