"Bring your chair over here."
The inventor rose instantly and, crossing the room, took a seat beside her, his hand finding hers in the dark.
"What is this you have been saying to Oliver about artists being great men?" she asked. "He's got a new idea in his head now—he wants to be a painter. I've thought for some time that Mr. Crocker was not a proper person for him to be so much with. He has evidently worked on the boy's imagination until he has determined to give up the law and study art."
"How do you know?"
"I've just heard him tell Sue Clayton so. All he wants now is my consent—he says he has yours."
The inventor paused, and gently smoothed his wife's fingers with his own.
"And you would not give it?" he inquired.
"How could I? It would ruin him—don't you know it?" There was a slight tinge of annoyance in her voice—not one of fault-finding, but rather of anxiety.
"That depends, my dear, on how well he could succeed," he answered, gently.
"Why, Richard!" She withdrew her hand quickly from his caressing touch, and looked at him in undisguised astonishment. "What has his SUCCEEDING to do with it? Surely you cannot be in earnest? I am willing he should do anything to make his living, but not that. No one we know has ever been a painter. It is neither respectable nor profitable. You see what a dreadful existence Mr. Crocker leads—hardly an associate in town, and no acquaintances for his daughter, and he's been painting ever since he was a boy. Oliver could not earn a penny at such work."