“How did you come,” Dryfoos interrupted, “to take up paintin’?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Beaton, a little scornfully.  “You don’t take a thing of that kind up, I fancy.  I always wanted to paint.”

“Father try to stop you?”

“No.  It wouldn’t have been of any use.  Why—­”

“My son, he wanted to be a preacher, and I did stop him or I thought I did.  But I reckon he was a preacher, all the same, every minute of his life.  As you say, it ain’t any use to try to stop a thing like that.  I reckon if a child has got any particular bent, it was given to it; and it’s goin’ against the grain, it’s goin’ against the law, to try to bend it some other way.  There’s lots of good business men, Mr. Beaton, twenty of ’em to every good preacher?”

“I imagine more than twenty,” said Beaton, amused and touched through his curiosity as to what the old man was driving at by the quaint simplicity of his speculations.

“Father ever come to the city?”

“No; he never has the time; and my mother’s an invalid.”

“Oh!  Brothers and sisters?”

“Yes; we’re a large family.”

“I lost two little fellers—­twins,” said Dryfoos, sadly.  “But we hain’t ever had but just the five.  Ever take portraits?”

“Yes,” said Beaton, meeting this zigzag in the queries as seriously as the rest.  “I don’t think I am good at it.”

Dryfoos got to his feet.  “I wish you’d paint a likeness of my son.  You’ve seen him plenty of times.  We won’t fight about the price, don’t you be afraid of that.”

Beaton was astonished, and in a mistaken way he was disgusted.  He saw that Dryfoos was trying to undo Mrs. Mandel’s work practically, and get him to come again to his house; that he now conceived of the offence given him as condoned, and wished to restore the former situation.  He knew that he was attempting this for Christine’s sake, but he was not the man to imagine that Dryfoos was trying not only to tolerate him, but to like him; and, in fact, Dryfoos was not wholly conscious himself of this end.  What they both understood was that Dryfoos was endeavoring to get at Beaton through Conrad’s memory; but with one this was its dedication to a purpose of self sacrifice, and with the other a vulgar and shameless use of it.

“I couldn’t do it,” said Beaton.  “I couldn’t think of attempting it.”

“Why not?” Dryfoos persisted.  “We got some photographs of him; he didn’t like to sit very well; but his mother got him to; and you know how he looked.”

“I couldn’t do it—­I couldn’t.  I can’t even consider it.  I’m very sorry.  I would, if it were possible.  But it isn’t possible.”

“I reckon if you see the photographs once”

“It isn’t that, Mr. Dryfoos.  But I’m not in the way of that kind of thing any more.”

“I’d give any price you’ve a mind to name—­”

“Oh, it isn’t the money!” cried Beaton, beginning to lose control of himself.