rush in with something utterly brilliant and pyrotechnic was to
take notable chances. The more cautious members of Chicago society,
even if they did not attend, would hear, and then would come ultimate
comment and decision.

The function began with a reception at four, which lasted until
six-thirty, and this was followed by a dance at nine, with music
by a famous stringed orchestra of Chicago, a musical programme by
artists of considerable importance, and a gorgeous supper from
eleven until one in a Chinese fairyland of lights, at small tables
filling three of the ground-floor rooms. As an added fillip to
the occasion Cowperwood had hung, not only the important pictures
which he had purchased abroad, but a new one--a particularly
brilliant Gerome, then in the heyday of his exotic popularity--a
picture of nude odalisques of the harem, idling beside the highly
colored stone marquetry of an oriental bath. It was more or less
"loose" art for Chicago, shocking to the uninitiated, though
harmless enough to the illuminati; but it gave a touch of color
to the art-gallery which the latter needed. There was also, newly
arrived and newly hung, a portrait of Aileen by a Dutch artist,
Jan van Beers, whom they had encountered the previous summer at
Brussels. He had painted Aileen in nine sittings, a rather brilliant
canvas, high in key, with a summery, out-of-door world behind
her--a low stone-curbed pool, the red corner of a Dutch brick
palace, a tulip-bed, and a blue sky with fleecy clouds. Aileen
was seated on the curved arm of a stone bench, green grass at her
feet, a pink-and-white parasol with a lacy edge held idly to one
side; her rounded, vigorous figure clad in the latest mode of
Paris, a white and blue striped-silk walking-suit, with a
blue-and-white-banded straw hat, wide-brimmed, airy, shading her