many friends who are Murphys to believe that you are one. In fact, I could do you much better if I knew what you are."

"That's quite simple. I'm a suicide. I walked right spang over the edge of life and disappeared. Splash! Bubble-bubble! There goes nothing. The only difference between me and a real suicide is that I have to eat. At times it's difficult."

"Haven't you any trade? Can't you do anything?" With a sweep of her little hand she indicated the bustling activities with which the outer streets whirred. "Isn't there any place for you in all this?"

He contemplated the world's work as exemplified around Our Square. His gaze came to rest upon a steam-roller, ponderously clanking over a railed-off portion of the street. "I suppose I could run that."

"Could you? That's a man's job at least. Have you ever run one?"

"No, but I know I could. Any kind of machinery just eats out of my hand."

"Well, that's something. It's better than being a model. Be at my house tomorrow at nine please."

For an hour thereafter Cyrus the Gaunt sat on the bench musing upon a small, flower-like, almost absurdly efficient young person who had contracted, as he viewed it, to inject light and color into life at fifty cents an hour, and who had plainly intimated that, in her view, he was not a man. It was that precise opinion expressed by another and a very unlike person which was responsible for his being where he was. At that time it had made him furious. Now it made him thoughtful.

Presently he went through his pockets, reckoned his assets, rose up from the bench, and made a trip to MacLachan's "Home of Fashion," where he left his clothes to be pressed overnight. In the morning he reappeared again, shaved to the closest limit of human endurance, and thus addressed the Scot:—

"Have you got my clothes pressed?"

"Aye," said the tailor.

"Well, unpress 'em again."

"Eh?" said the tailor.

"Unpress'em. Sit on'em. Roll'em on the floor. Muss'em up. Put all the wrinkles back, just as they were."

"Mon, ye shud leave the whiskey be," advised the tailor.

Thereupon Cyrus caught up his neatly creased suit and proceeded to play football with it, after which he put it on and viewed himself with satisfaction.

"And I almost forgot that she wouldn't have any use for me, improved," he muttered as he wended his way to the little, old friendly house. "Lord, I might have lost my job!"

Any expectation of social diversion at fifty cents an hour which Cyrus the Gaunt may have cherished was promptly quashed on his arrival. It was a very businesslike little sculptor who took him in hand.

"Sit here, please—the right knee farther forward—let the chin drop a little—" and all that sort of thing.

He might not even watch the soft, strong little hands as they patted and kneaded, nor the vivid face as plastic as the material from which the hands worked their wonders, for when he attempted it:—

"I don't wish you to look at me. I wish you to look at nothing, as you do when you sit on the bench. Make your eyes tired again."

The difficulty was that his eyes, tired so long with that weariness which lies at the very roots of being, didn't feel tired at all in the little studio. For one thing, there was an absurd, fluffed-up whirlwind of a kitten who performed miracles of obstacle-racing all over the place. Then, in the most unexpected crannies and corners lurked tiny bronzes, instinct with life: a wistful dog submitting an injured paw to a boy hardly as large as himself; "Androcles" this one was labeled. Then there was "Mystery," a young, ill-clad girl, looking down at a dead butterfly; "Remnants," a withered and bent old woman, staggering under her load of builders' refuse; "The Knight," a small boy astride across the body of his drunken father, brandishing a cudgel against a circle of unseen tormentors; and many others, all vivid with that feeling for the human struggle which alone can make metal live.

"Recess!" cried the worker presently. "You're doing quite well!"

Thus encouraged, Cyrus ventured a question:—

"Where are the dancers?"

"They're all in the window."

"But this in here is quite as big work, isn't it? Why isn't some of it on display?"

"It's for outsiders. It isn't for my people." She put a world of protectiveness in the two final words.

"I can't see why not."

"Because the people of Our Square don't need to be told of the tragedy of life. Joy and play and laughter is what they need. So I give it to them."

A light came into his tired, old-young eyes. "Do you know, I begin to think you're a very wonderful person."

"Time to work again," said she. Whereby, being an understanding young man, he perceived that there would be no safe divergence from the strict relations of employer and employed, for the present at least. Half a dozen times he sat for her, sometimes collecting a dollar, sometimes only fifty cents, the money being invariably handed over with a demure and determined air of business procedure, and duly entered in a tiny book, which was a never-failing source of suppressed amusement to him. Then one day the basis abruptly changed, for a reason he did not learn about until long after.

It had to do with a process which I must regretfully term eavesdropping, on the part of the little sculptor. The subjects were two-on-a-bench, in Our Square. One was Cyrus the Gaunt; the other an inconsiderable and hopeless lounger, grim and wan.

Silver passed between them, and something else, less tangible, something which lighted a sudden flame of hope in the hopeless face.

"A real job?" the lurking sculptor overheard him say, hoarsely.

Cyrus nodded. "Nine o'clock to-morrow morning, here," said he.

Slipping quietly away, the girl almost ran into the grim and wan lounger, no longer so grim and several degrees less wan, as he rounded the opposite curve of the circle and passed out on the street in front of her. The next instant Cyrus shot by her at a long-legged gallop and caught the man by the shoulder.

"Here! Wait! Not nine o'clock," he cried breathlessly. "I forgot. I've got an engagement, a—very important business engagement."

The other's jaw dropped. "What the—" he began, when there appeared before them both a trim and twinkling vision of femininity.

"I'm glad I saw you," said the vision to Cyrus, "because I shan't want you until ten-thirty to-morrow." Then she passed on, so deep in thought that she hardly responded to the greetings which accosted her on all sides. "I don't understand it at all" she murmured.

Promptly upon the morrow's hour Cyrus appeared at the studio, rumpled and mussed as usual. "How do you do?" the artist greeted him. "Before we go to work I want you to meet Fluff."

Cyrus glanced at the kitten, who was chasing a phantom mouse up the swaying curtain. "I already know Fluff," said he.

"Oh, no, you don't," she corrected gently. "That is, Fluff doesn't know you. She doesn't know that you are alive. Fluff is a person of fine distinctions. Come here, Mischief." The kitten gave over the chase, after one last lightning swipe, and trotted across the room. "Fluff," said her mistress, "this is our friend, Cyrus." The kitten purred and nosed Cyrus's foot.

"Thank you," said the young man gratefully. "I also am not wholly insensible to fine distinctions. Fluff, do you know how those ancient barbarian parties looked and acted when they were called 'friend of the state of Rome'? Well, regard me."

His employer twinkled at him with her eyes. "I've sold you," she remarked.

"At a good price?"

"Yes. You were really very good."

"It would have been kind to let me see myself before you bartered me away into eternal captivity."

"Kinder not."

"You mean I shouldn't have liked your idea of me?"

"Didn't I say that it was good?" she returned with composed pride. "My idea of you wouldn't be good, as modeling. This is the real