for YOU!"

He stood another moment; then, without a word, he quitted the studio.
I drew a long breath when he was gone, for I said to myself that I
shouldn't see him again. I had not told him definitely that I was in
danger of having my work rejected, but I was vexed at his not having
felt the catastrophe in the air, read with me the moral of our
fruitless collaboration, the lesson that, in the deceptive atmosphere
of art, even the highest respectability may fail of being plastic.

I didn't owe my friends money, but I did see them again. They re-
appeared together, three days later, and under the circumstances
there was something tragic in the fact. It was a proof to me that
they could find nothing else in life to do. They had threshed the
matter out in a dismal conference--they had digested the bad news
that they were not in for the series. If they were not useful to me
even for the Cheapside their function seemed difficult to determine,
and I could only judge at first that they had come, forgivingly,
decorously, to take a last leave. This made me rejoice in secret
that I had little leisure for a scene; for I had placed both my other
models in position together and I was pegging away at a drawing from
which I hoped to derive glory. It had been suggested by the passage
in which Rutland Ramsay, drawing up a chair to Artemisia's piano-
stool, says extraordinary things to her while she ostensibly fingers
out a difficult piece of music. I had done Miss Churm at the piano
before--it was an attitude in which she knew how to take on an
absolutely poetic grace. I wished the two figures to "compose"
together, intensely, and my little Italian had entered perfectly into
my conception. The pair were vividly before me, the piano had been
pulled out; it was a charming picture of blended youth and murmured