The Triumph of Jill

"Art," said the man, regarding lingeringly a half finished canvas standing on an easel in the middle of the poorly furnished room, and then the very insignificant little girl beside him, who had posed for him ever since she had dispensed with long clothes, and subsequently taken to them, again, and had always proved an unsatisfactory model from an artistic point of view, "is the only thing really worth living for, and yet it's the most bally rotten thing to take up--as a bread winning profession, you understand. When you've got the bread, and plenty of it, it's a very fine way of getting butter to it, and in exceptional cases preserves as well. I'm sorry," with a smothered sigh of regret, "that I didn't go in for something more satisfactory for your sake; I should have felt easier in my mind when it came to pegging out."

But the girl was enthusiastic upon the subject as well as himself.

"It was your life's work," she answered; "you could not have done otherwise."

"Perhaps you are right," he said, turning his head restlessly upon the cushion. "My life's work! And what a poor thing I have made of it. What a grind it has been, and what a failure."

"Don't, dear," she whispered, slipping her hand into his with a caressing, protecting gesture; "it hurts me to hear you. And after all there is nothing to regret. We have been very happy together, you and I; I wouldn't have had it different. If you had been more successful in a worldly sense we might not have been all in all to one another as we have been. We have always managed to get along."

"Yes," he answered with a touch of masculine arrogance, "it was all right so long as I was well, but I shall never finish that canvas, Jill, though I've forced myself to work to the last; but I'm pegging out fast now--two legs in the grave," with a flash of humour and the old light of mirth in his eyes again, "though I'm hanging on to the upper ground with both hands like the tenacious beggar I always was; but the sods are giving way, and I shall suddenly drop out of sight one day, and then-- and then," the sad look coming back to his face, "you'll be left to fight the battle of life alone."

The girl's lip quivered, and she turned away her head to hide her emotion, fearful that any display of grief would hurt him, and sadden his last few hours on earth.

"I shall manage," she answered confidently, "I shall teach; you have often said I was quite competent of doing that, and occasionally I sell my own work, you know."

"Yes," he said, "you have my talent, and I have taught you all I could. But I wish that I had more to leave you; there will be so little after all the expenses are paid."

"There are the models--my art school stocked," she replied with assumed cheerfulness. "I shall be only awaiting the pupils, and they will come after a while."