Mrs. Carstairs said, when her husband told her who their guest had been, that they ought to have held a pistol to his head and made him make out a few checks for them while they had him about.  “Billionaires don’t drop in like that every day,” said she.  “I really don’t think we appreciated our opportunity.”

They were very much surprised a few days later when the railroad king rang at the door, and begged to be allowed to come in and get warm, and to have another glass of hot Scotch.  He did this very often, and they got to like him very much.  He said he did not care for his club, and his room at home was too strongly suggestive of the shop, on account of the big things he had thought over there, but that their studio was so bright and warm; and they reminded him, he said, of the days when he was first married, before he was rich.  They tried to imagine what he was like when he was first married, and failed utterly.  Mrs. Carstairs was quite sure he was not at all like her husband.

* * * * *

There was a youth who came to call on the Misses Cole, who had a great deal of money, and who was a dilettante in art.  He had had a studio in Paris, where he had spent the last two years, and he wanted one, so he said at dinner one day, in New York.

Old Mr. Cole was seated but one place away from him, and was wondering when the courses would stop and he could get upstairs.  He did not care for the dinners his wife gave, but she always made him come to them.  He never could remember whether the roast came before or after the bird, and he was trying to guess how much longer it would be before he would be allowed to go, when he overheard the young man at his daughter’s side speaking.

“The only studio in the building that I would care to have,” said the young man, “is occupied at present.  A young fellow named Carstairs has it, but he is going to give it up next week, when I will move in.  He has not been successful in getting rid of his pictures, and he and his wife are going back to Vermont to live.  I feel rather sorry for the chap, for he is really very clever and only needs a start.  It is almost impossible for a young artist to get on here, I imagine, unless he knows people, or unless some one who is known buys his work.”

“Yes,” said Miss Cole, politely.  “Didn’t you say you met the Whelen girls before you left Paris?  Were they really such a success at Homburg?”

Mr. Cole did not eat any more dinner, but sat thoughtfully until he was allowed to go.  Then he went out into the hall, and put on his overcoat and hat.

The Carstairses were dismantling the studio.  They had been at it all day, and they were very tired.  It seemed so much harder work to take the things down and pack them away than it did to unpack them and put them up in appropriate corners and where they would show to the best advantage.

The studio looked very bare indeed, for the rugs and altar cloths and old curtains had been stripped from the walls, and the pictures and arms and plaques lay scattered all over the floor.  It was only a week before Christmas, and it seemed a most inappropriate time to evict one’s self.  “And it’s hardest,” said Carstairs, as he rolled up a great Daghestan rug and sat on it, “to go back and own up that you’re a failure.”