“I wish to Heaven I were infected with the bacillus of industry,” broke out Ogilvy.  “I never come into this place but I see Kelly busily doing something.”

“You’re an inhuman sort of brute, Kelly!” added Annan.  “What do you work that way for—­money?  If I had my way I’d spend three quarters of my time shooting and fishing and one quarter painting—­and I’m as devotedly stuck on art as any healthy man ought to be.”

“Art’s a bum mistress if she makes you hustle like that!” commented Ogilvy.  “Shake her, Kelly.  She’s a wampire mit a sarpint’s tongue!”

“The worst of Kelly is that he’d rather paint,” said Annan, hopelessly.  “It’s sufficient to sicken the proverbial cat.”

“Get a machine and take us all out to Woodmanston?” suggested Ogilvy.  “It’s a bee—­u—­tiful day, dearie!”

“Get out of here!” retorted Neville, painting composedly.

“Your industry saddens us,” insisted Annan.  “It’s only in mediocrity that you encounter industry.  Genius frivols; talent takes numerous vacations on itself—­”

“And at its own expense,” added Valerie, demurely.  “I knew a man who couldn’t finish his ‘Spring Academy’ in time:  and he had all winter to finish it.  But he didn’t.  Did you ever hear about that man, Sam?”

“Me,” said Ogilvy, bowing with hand on heart.  “And with that cruel jab from you—­false fair one—­I’ll continue heavenward in the elevator.  Come on, Harry.”

Annan took an elaborate farewell of Valerie which she met in the same mock-serious manner; then she waved a gay and dainty adieu to Ogilvy, and reseated herself after their departure.  But this time she settled down into a great armchair facing Neville and his canvas, and lay back extending her arms and resting the back of her head on the cushions.

Whether or not Neville was conscious of her presence below she could not determine, so preoccupied did he appear to be with the work in hand.  She lay there in the pleasant, mellow light of the great windows, watching him, at first intently, then, soothed by the soft spring wind that fitfully stirred the hair at her temples, she relaxed her attention, idly contented, happy without any particular reason.

Now and then a pigeon flashed by the windows, sheering away high above the sunlit city.  Once, wind-caught, or wandering into unaccustomed heights, high in the blue a white butterfly glimmered, still mounting to infinite altitudes, fluttering, breeze-blown, a silvery speck adrift.

“Like a poor soul aspiring,” she thought listlessly, watching with dark eyes over which the lids dropped lazily at moments, only to lift again as her gaze reverted to the man above.

She thought about him, too; she usually did—­about his niceness to her, his never-to-be-forgotten kindness; her own gratitude to him for her never-to-be-forgotten initiation.

It seemed scarcely possible that two months had passed since her novitiate—­that two months ago she still knew nothing of the people, the friendships, the interest, the surcease from loneliness and hopeless apathy, that these new conditions had brought to her.