and she learned with a thrill that no one could hope to understand him who
had not seen him in his studio at Hillbridge, surrounded by his own works.
"The man and the art interpret each other," their exponent declared; and
Claudia Day, bending a brilliant eye on the future, wondered if she were
ever to be admitted to the privilege of that double initiation.

Keniston, to his other claims to distinction, added that of being hard to
know. His friends always hastened to announce the fact to strangers--adding
after a pause of suspense that they "would see what they could do."
Visitors in whose favor he was induced to make an exception were further
warned that he never spoke unless he was interested--so that they mustn't
mind if he remained silent. It was under these reassuring conditions that,
some ten days after her arrival at Hillbridge, Miss Day was introduced
to the master's studio. She found him a tall listless-looking man, who
appeared middle-aged to her youth, and who stood before his own pictures
with a vaguely interrogative gaze, leaving the task of their interpretation
to the lady who had courageously contrived the visit. The studio, to
Claudia's surprise, was bare and shabby. It formed a rambling addition to
the small cheerless house in which the artist lived with his mother and
a widowed sister. For Claudia it added the last touch to his distinction
to learn that he was poor, and that what he earned was devoted to the
maintenance of the two limp women who formed a neutral-tinted background to
his impressive outline. His pictures of course fetched high prices; but he
worked slowly--"painfully," as his devotees preferred to phrase it--with
frequent intervals of ill health and inactivity, and the circle of Keniston
connoisseurs was still as small as it was distinguished. The girl's fancy
instantly hailed in him that favorite figure of imaginative youth, the
artist who would rather starve than paint a pot-boiler. It is known to
comparatively few that the production of successful pot-boilers is an art
in itself, and that such heroic abstentions as Keniston's are not always