"Only a year's real work," Kitty broke in eagerly. "I have only been here
a year, you know; and those two years at home I ought not to count, for I
did not work then as I do now."

"Why not?" asked Fräulein Vogel sharply. And Kitty changed color.

"Ah, one must not ask questions," Fräulein Vogel remarked; "but one can
have plenty of suspicions. I dare say you were in love, and, as love
failed, you have taken to art. So it goes with women. Everything but
marriage is a _pis-aller_."

Kitty half rose: the stray arrow had sped home, and it rankled in a new
wound.

"I am a woman myself," added Fräulein Vogel, with a droll smile that
melted the girl's anger in an instant.

Kitty dropped down on the sofa. "Well," she said gayly, "I grant that I
was in love once on a time; but that is all past. Now I want to be a
painter. Listen: I have not much money, I have no friends,--that is,
friends such as we read about,--and I must learn to make some money. When
I am thirty I shall begin to make money; otherwise--"

"You are spending your capital," said Fräulein Vogel.

"If I spent only my income I should either wear shoes and no clothes, or
clothes and no shoes," answered Kitty, laughing, with a little air of
recklessness that sat well on her. "Besides," she added sagely, "it is
well to burn one's ships. Sink or swim."