winter daylight was going; presently they would all stop
work. Partly for the pleasure of being chaffed and envied
and complimented in the anteroom in the general washing
of brushes, and partly to watch Lucien's rapid progress
among the remaining easels, Mademoiselle Palicsky
deliberately sat down, in a prematurely vacant chair,
slung one slender little limb over the other, and waited.
As she sat there a generous thought rose above her
exultation. She hoped everybody else in the atelier had
guessed what Lucien was saying to her all that while,
and had seen him carry off her day's work, but not the
little American. The little American, who was at least
thirteen inches taller than Mademoiselle Palicsky, was
sufficiently discouraged already, and it was pathetic,
in view of almost a year of failure, to see how she clung
to her ghost of a talent Besides, the little American
admired Nadie Palicsky, her friend, her comrade, quite
enough already.

Elfrida had heard, nevertheless. She listened eagerly,
tensely, as she always did when Lucien opened his lips
in her neighborhood. When she saw him take the sketch to
show in the men's atelier downstairs, to exhibit to that
horde of animals below, whose studies and sketches and
compositions were so constantly brought up for the stimulus
and instruction of Lucien's women students, she grew
suddenly so white that the girl who worked next her, a
straw-colored Swede, asked her if she were ill, and
offered her a little green bottle of salts of lavender.
"It's that beast of a calorifere," the Swede said, nodding