holds me as a cat does a mouse. You see, it has always been the one thing in the world for me, and life has had no meaning apart from it. I want to be genuine—not like other women. Most women wear their careers as if they were jewelry. Work is only a new species of ornament. They aren't great enough to lose themselves in it.
"Only I should like one wee bit of encouragement! The master never stopped at my easel, as he always does in books, to say, 'You have a touch. There is a future before you.' I've got nothing to depend on but my belief in myself."
"It is all very wonderful to me," said Mrs. Kent, rising to go. "How can you interpret people's faces in that way without having had their experience?"
"I don't know. I have an idea that you can interpret other people's lives better if your own isn't too much tangled up. Lack of life is life's best interpreter."
There was a knock at the door. The janitor had brought Miss Bradford a card. She stood for a minute, turning it over in paint-stained fingers.
"Say that I will come down directly."
Then she went back to her canvas and spoiled the thumb.
Five minutes later Anne walked down-stairs with Howard Stanton's card in her hand. Miserere accompanied her to the reception-room door, then dashed away to play with the other studio cats, Victoria Regina, and Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.
Anne tore up the card, then wondered helplessly what to do with the pieces. It was strange that Howard should come just now. But then, it was strange that he had not come before. She must be rather formal at first. Memories drifted to her of scenes where she had met him in imagination. In imagination she had been quite self-possessed. Now she was undeniably ill at ease. This was only because of her haunting anxiety lest she had spoiled this man's life.
As she entered, the young man rose and held out his hand. He, apparently, was not embarrassed.
"I am presuming upon our old acquaintance," he said. "Chance has brought me to the city——"
"Why, Howard!" gasped Anne. She had not meant to be so formal as that.
He had not changed, she thought, as he drew a wicker chair out for her from its position by the Van Dyck portrait. He had the same voice, the same light brown hair, though the lock over the forehead was gone. Anne suppressed a desire to tell him that he had grown, remembering that he was six feet two when she saw him last. She wondered vaguely at her own surprise in finding him so robust.
"When did you return from Europe?" she asked stiffly, then repented having spoken. That seemed like alluding to their last meeting.
"A year and a half ago. I studied in Paris first, then went to London for inspiration."
"London!"
"People do not usually go to London for art. But French art is dead, except for the Symbolists."
This sweeping assertiveness seemed very familiar.
"I got hold of some good ideas among the London Socialists. There's a movement afoot for the popularization of art. It is indirectly the work of Ruskin. After I came home I taught a year, just to send the message on."
Anne lifted her eyebrows.
"You have a new theory?"
"I have," he answered. "Moreover, I've got a commission, to design frescoes for a room in the City Hall."
"Here?" cried Anne eagerly. Then she corrected her manner.
"You have been very successful. I saw notices of your two Sâlon pictures. Why did the Art Review call you an impressionist?"
"It's a perfectly harmless term, as it doesn't mean anything."
"You always were something of an impressionist in temperament!"
Howard changed the subject abruptly. He had come to bespeak Miss Bradford's interest in a pupil of his, Miss Wistar, now at the Rembrandt Studios. Anne politely promised to call.
The difficulties of finding their bearings in these new waters increased. They talked of Hazleton, of their childhood, of the water-colour exhibition. Finally they drifted into a half-merry quarrel over theories of work. Once again the old, boyish, emphatic manner broke through the new reserve.
"Realism! There's nothing in it, French realism anyway, but impure taste and false accuracy."
The caller accepted with apparent interest an invitation to come again. In the street he fell to thinking.
"Anne has not changed in the least, but she looks tired. She has been working too hard. And her father's death was hard for her."
He had not expected the reminder of old days to be so poignant.
Anne went back to the studio and picked up her brushes. Howard had improved beyond her best hopes for him. He was not a blighted being, but was self-poised, interested in his work.
"I am glad it has all ended sensibly," she said to herself. "He's very satisfactory, almost too satisfactory."
Then her eyes clouded, and she could not see the thumb.
CHAPTER IV
Helen Wistar had spent three days in finding appropriate furniture for her studio. She looked with satisfaction at the sofa-bed, draped with unhemmed brown denim, the pine chiffonnier, the huge screen covered with burlap. Three willow-ware cups, with plates to match, some plated spoons and forks, and a tiny coffee-pot decorated a shelf on the wall. These were for her housekeeping.
"I'm so glad I'm here at last!" she said.
She took the "Fabian Essays on Socialism" and Ruskin's "Political Economy of Art" out of her trunk and put them on the floor.
Somebody knocked.
The girl greeted her visitor with an embarrassed self-possession, gazing with wide-opened brown eyes as she heard her name.
"Miss Bradford? Oh, do you know, I have a note of introduction to you from my old art teacher, Mr. Stanton!"
She gracefully offered Anne a wooden kitchen chair, and seated herself on a pine box under the window.
Anne was puzzled. The bare walls and cheap furniture wore the desolation of apparent poverty. But a gold-mounted travelling-bag stood in one corner. From the box where her hostess was sitting, the strong light bringing out all the rich colouring of her hair and lashes and curving cheeks, came the gleam of the silver furnishings of her toilet-table.
"Yes," Anne was saying, "I knew Mr. Stanton when we were children. We went to the same village school. My father was the minister. His father owned the mills."
"Mr. Stanton has very remarkable theories about art," observed the girl solemnly.
"He
