Evidently there had been an ebb in her prosperity; the tumble of a New
Yorker's fortune leads from the Avenue to the Eighties, from thence
through Morristown, Staten Island, to the West Side. Besides, she painted
pictures; he knew the aroma of fixitive, siccative, and burnt sienna; and
her studio adjoined his sky drawing-room.

He thought of this girl quite impersonally; she resembled a youthful
beauty he had known--might still know if he chose; for a man who can pay
for his evening clothes need never deny himself the society he was bred
to.

She certainly did resemble that girl--she had the same bluish violet
eyes, the same white and deeply fringed lids, the same free grace of
carriage, a trifle too boyish at times--the same firmly rounded, yet
slender, figure.

"Now, as a matter of fact," he mused aloud, stroking the sleeping
squirrel on his knee, "I could have fallen in love with either of those
girls--before Copper blew up."

Pursuing his innocuous meditation he nodded to himself: "I rather like
the poor one better than any girl I ever saw. Doubtless she paints
portraits over solar prints. That's all right; she's doing more than I
have done yet.... I approve of those eyes of hers; they're like the eyes
of that waking Aphrodite in the Luxembourg. If she would only just look
at me once instead of looking through me when we pass one another in the
hall----"

The deadened gallop of a horse on the bridle path caught his ear. The