When the artist found Conrad Lagrange and told him that the picture was finished, the novelist, without comment, turned his attention to Czar.

The painter, with an amused smile, asked, “Won’t you come for a look at it, old man?”

The other returned gruffly, “Thanks; but I don’t think I care to risk it.”

The artist laughed.  “But Miss Andres wants you to come.  She sent me to fetch you.”

Conrad Lagrange turned his peculiar, baffling eyes upon the young man.  “Does she like it?”

“She seems to.”

“If she seems to, she does,” retorted the other, rising.  “And that’s different.”

When the novelist, with his three friends, stood before the easel, he was silent for so long that the girl said anxiously, “I—­I thought you would like it, Mr. Lagrange.”

They saw the strange man’s eyes fill with tears as he answered, in the gentle tones that always marked his words to her, “Like it?  My dear child, how could I help liking it?  It is you—­you!” To the artist, he added, “It is great work, my boy, great!  I—­I wish your mother could have seen it.  It is like her—­as I knew her.  You have done well.”  He turned, with gentle courtesy, to Myra Willard; “And you?  What is your verdict, Miss Willard?”

With her arm around the beautiful original of the portrait, the woman with the disfigured face answered, “I think, sir, that I, better than any one in all the world, know how good, how true, it is.”

Conrad Lagrange spoke again to the artist, inquiringly; “You will exhibit it?”

“Miss Andres says that I may—­but not as a portrait.”

The novelist could not conceal his pleasure at the answer.  Presently, he said, “If it is not to be shown as a portrait, may I suggest a title?”

“I was hoping you would!” exclaimed the painter.

“And so was I,” cried Sibyl, with delight.  “What is it, Mr. Lagrange?”

“Let it be exhibited as ’The Spirit of Nature—­A Portrait’,” answered Conrad Lagrange.

As the novelist finished speaking, Yee Kee appeared in the doorway.  “They come—­big automobile.  Whole lot people.  Misse Taine, Miste’ Lutlidge, sick man, whole lot—­I come tell you.”

The artist spoke quickly,—­“Stop them in the house, Kee; I’ll be right in,”—­and the Chinaman vanished.

At Yee Kee’s announcement, Myra Willard’s face went white, and she gave a low cry.

“Never mind, dear,” said the girl, soothingly.  “We can slip away through the garden—­come.”

When Sibyl and the woman with the disfigured face were gone, Conrad Lagrange and Aaron King looked at each other, questioningly.

Then the novelist said harshly,—­pointing to the picture on the easel,—­“You’re not going to let that flock of buzzards feed on this, are you?  I’ll murder some one, sure as hell, if you do.”

“I don’t think I could stand it, myself,” said the artist, laughing grimly, as he drew the velvet curtain to hide the portrait.