This painting made, as it were, another room; so that Kitty’s study on Central Park West seemed to open into that charming French interior, into one of the most highly harmonized and richly associated rooms in Paris.  There her friends sat or stood about, men distinguished, women at once plain and beautiful, with their furs and bonnets, their clothes that were so distinctly not smart—­all held together by the warm lamp-light, by an indescribable atmosphere of graceful and gracious human living.

Pierce Tevis, after he had entered noiselessly and greeted Kitty, stood before her fire and looked over her shoulder at this picture.

“It’s nice that you have them there together, now that they are scattered, God knows where, fighting to preserve just that.  But your own room, too, is charming,” he added at last, taking his eyes from the canvas.

Kitty shrugged her shoulders.

“Bah!  I can help to feed the lamp, but I can’t supply the dear things it shines upon.”

“Well, tonight it shines upon you and me, and we aren’t so bad.”  Tevis stepped forward and took her hand affectionately.  “You’ve been over a rough bit of road.  I’m so sorry.  It’s left you looking very lovely, though.  Has it been very hard to get on?”

She brushed his hand gratefully against her cheek and nodded.

“Awfully dismal.  Everything has been shut out from me but—­gossip.  That always gets in.  Often I don’t mind, but this time I have.  People do tell such lies about me.”

“Of course we do.  That’s part of our fun, one of the many pleasures you give us.  It only shows how hard up we are for interesting public personages; for a royal family, for romantic fiction, if you will.  But I never hear any stories that wound me, and I’m very sensitive about you.”

“I’m gossiped about rather more than the others, am I not?”

“I believe!  Heaven send that the day when you are not gossiped about is far distant!  Do you want to bite off your nose to spite your pretty face?  You are the sort of person who makes myths.  You can’t turn around without making one.  That’s your singular good luck.  A whole staff of publicity men, working day and night, couldn’t do for you what you do for yourself.  There is an affinity between you and the popular imagination.”

“I suppose so,” said Kitty, and sighed.  “All the same, I’m getting almost as tired of the person I’m supposed to be as of the person I really am.  I wish you would invent a new Kitty Ayrshire for me, Pierce.  Can’t I do something revolutionary?  Marry, for instance?”

Tevis rose in alarm.

“Whatever you do, don’t try to change your legend.  You have now the one that gives the greatest satisfaction to the greatest number of people.  Don’t disappoint your public.  The popular imagination, to which you make such a direct appeal, for some reason wished you to have a son, so it has given you one.  I’ve heard a dozen versions of the story, but it is always a son, never by any chance a daughter.  Your public gives you what is best for you.  Let well enough alone.”