“If I hadn’t seen you or Mr. Cairns again,” she began, “I’d have come to think of last night almost as a dream.”

“That’s queer, Miss Grey,” he answered, taking her hand.  “It’s like a dream to me, too.”

“I didn’t feel like working to-day,” she said.  “The routine appalled me, so I came over to look in upon Vina Nettleton.  Her studio is above.  Have you seen her ’Stations of the Cross’?”

“No.”

“Her four years’ task—­for the great Quebec cathedral?...  You really must.  It’s an experience to watch her work, and Vina’s worth knowing—­pure spirit....  Would you like to go up with me?”

Alternating fascinations possessed Bedient, as the elevator carried them upward....  These were his real playmates, these people of pictures and statues.  He had come a long way through different lights and darkness to find them.  He did not know their ways of play, but well knew he should like them when he learned, and that their play would prove prettier than any he had ever known....  And this tall, still woman beside him—­almost as tall as he, of rarest texture, and with a voice sensuously soft, having that quality of softness which distinguishes a charcoal from a graphite line—­this woman seemed identified in some remoteness of mind with long-ago rainy days, of which there had been none too many....  Her voice seemed to lose direction in his fancy, loitering there, strangely enticing.... "Would you like to go up with me?"...  And these were Beth Truba’s friends....

A bell was touched in the high hall, and Vina Nettleton’s plaintive tone trailed forth: 

“Won’t you come right in—­please—­into my muddy room?”

A large room opening upon a steel fire-frame, where two could sit, and a view of the city to the North.  Commandingly near on the left arose the Metropolitan Tower.  The studio itself had an unfinished look, with its step-ladders and scaffolding and plaster-panels.  In the midst of such ponderous affairs, stood a frail creature in a streaky blouse, exhibiting her clayey hands and smiling pensively.  It was only when you looked at the figures in the panels, and at the models in clay, that Vina Nettleton appeared to belong to these matters of a contractor.  Marguerite Grey was saying: 

“When I get too weary, or heart-sick, tired of my own work, in the sense of being bored by its commonness——­”

“Wicked woman,” murmured Vina.

“When the thought comes that I should be a cashier in a restaurant,” the other went on, in her sadly smiling way, speaking altogether to Bedient, “I come to this place.  Here is an artist, Mr. Bedient.  Vina has been working at these things for two years.  She has still two years to finish within her contract.  These are her prayers; they will live in the transept of a great cathedral.”

“Don’t mind the Grey One, Mr. Bedient,” Vina Nettleton said lightly.  “We are dear friends.”