exactly how I ought to consider you."
"As a friend, please."
"Perhaps. Are we going to dance or talk?"
After they had been dancing for a few moments:
"So you are a crew man?"
"Who told you?"
"I've inquired about you," she admitted, glancing sideways at the tall, spare, graceful young fellow with his almost golden colouring. "I have questioned various people. They told me things."
"Did they give me a black eye?" he asked, laughingly.
"No. But somebody gave you a pair of golden ones… Like two sun-spots on a brown brook. You've a golden look; do you know it?"
"Red-headed men turn that way when they're in the sun and wind," he explained, still laughing, yet plainly fascinated by the piquant, breezy informality of this young girl. "Tell me, do you still go to school, Miss Quest?"
"How insulting! … Yes! But it was mean of you to ask."
"Good Lord! You didn't expect me to think you the mother of a family, did you?"
That mollified her.
"Where do you go to school?" he continued.
"Miss Montfort's. I finish this week."
"And then?"
"To college, I'm afraid."
"Don't you want to?"
"I'd rather go to a dramatic school."
"Is that your inclination, Miss Quest?"
"I'd adore it! But dad doesn't."
"Too bad."
"I don't know. I'm quite happy, anyway. I'm having a wonderful time, whatever I'm doing."
"Then it isn't an imperious call from Heaven to leave all and elevate the drama?" he asked, with a pretense of anxiety that made her laugh.
"You are disrespectful. I'm sure I could elevate the drama if I had the chance. But I sha'n't get it. However, next to the stage I adore to paint," she explained. "There is a class. I have attended it for two years. I paint rather nicely."
"No wonder we feel so friendly," exclaimed Grismer.
"Why? Do you paint?"
"No, but I'm to be a sculptor."
"How wonderful! I'm simply mad to do something, too! Don't you love the atmosphere of Bohemia, Mr. Grismer?"
He said that he did with a mischievous smile straight into her grey eyes.
"It is my dream," she went on, slightly confused, "to have a studio – not a bit fixed up, you know, and not frilly – but with just one or two wonderful old objects of art here and there and the rest a fascinating confusion of artistic things."
"Great!" he assented. "Please ask me to tea!"
"Wouldn't it be wonderful? And of course I'd work like fury until five o'clock every day, and then just have tea ready for the brilliant and interesting people who are likely to drop in to discuss the most wonderful things! Just think of it, Mr. Grismer! Think what a heavenly privilege it must be to live such a life, surrounded by inspiration and – and atmosphere and – and such things – and listening to the conversation of celebrated people telling each other all about art and how they became famous! What a lofty, exalted life! What a magnificent incentive to self-cultivation, attainment, and creative accomplishment! And yet, how charmingly informal and free from artificiality!"
Grismer also had looked forward to a professional career in Bohemia, with a lively appreciation of its agreeable informalities. And the irresponsibility and liberty – perhaps license – of such a life had appealed to him only in a lesser degree than the desire to satisfy his artistic proclivities with a block of marble or a fistful of clay.
"Yes," he repeated, "that is undoubtedly the life, Miss Quest. And it certainly seems as though you and I were cut out for it."
Stephanie sighed, lost in iridescent dreams of higher things – vague visions of spiritual and artistic levels from which, if attained, genius might stoop to regenerate the world.
But Grismer's amber eyes were brilliant with slumbering mischief.
"What do you think of Grismer, Steve?" inquired Jim Cleland, as they drove back to Boston that night, where his father, at the hotel, awaited them both.
"I really don't exactly know, Jim. Do you like him?"
"Sometimes. He's crew, Dicky, Hasty Pudding. He's a curious chap. You've got to hand him that, anyway."
"Cleverness?"
"Oh, more than that, I think. He's an artist through and through."
"Really!"
"Oh, yes. He's a bird on the box, too."
"What!"
"On the piano, Steve. He's the real thing. He sings charmingly. He draws better than Harry Beltran. He's done things in clay and wax – really wonderful things. You saw him in theatricals."
"Did I? Which was he?"
"Why, the Duke of Brooklyn, of course. He was practically the whole show!"
"I didn't know it," she murmured. "I did not recognize him. How clever he really is!"
"You hadn't met him then," remarked Jim.
"But I had seen him, once," she answered in a low, dreamy voice.
Jim Cleland glanced around at her. Again it struck him that Stephanie was growing up very rapidly into an amazingly ornamental girl – a sister to be proud of.
"Did you have a good time, Steve?" he asked.
"Wonderful," she sighed; smiling back at him out of sleepy eyes.
The car sped on toward Boston.
CHAPTER IX
Stephanie Quest was introduced to society when she was eighteen, and was not a success. She had every chance at her debut to prove popular, but she remained passive, charmingly indifferent to social success, not inclined to step upon the treadmill, unwilling to endure the exactions, formalities, sacrifices, and stupid routine which alone make social position possible. There was too much chaff for the few grains of wheat to interest her.
She wanted a career, and she wanted to waste no time about it, and she was delightfully certain that the path to it lay through some dramatic or art school to the stage or studio.
Jim laughed at her and teased her; but his father worried a great deal, and when Stephanie realized that he was worrying she became reasonable about the matter and said that the next best thing would be college.
"Dad," she said, "I adore dancing and gay dinner parties, but there is nothing else to them but mere dancing and eating. The trouble seems to
