maid, without an apron, and they were led into a long, queerly furnished studio, with a balcony from which they had a distant cloudless view of the river, Gabriella felt for a minute that she must have fallen into a dream.  Long afterwards she learned that Billy’s studio was charming, with its blurred Italian tapestries, which had faded to an exquisite tone, with its broken torsos of old marble, warming to deep ivory in the sunlight, with its ecstatic haloed saints praying against dim Tuscan landscapes, with its odd and unexpected seats of carved stone on which the cushions made strange splotches and pools of colour.  At the time, seen through provincial eyes, it seemed merely “queer” to her; and queerer still appeared the undraped figures of women, all lean lines and violet shadows, which, unframed and unhung, filled the dusty corners.

“The river is lovely, but it is so far away,” she said, turning her abashed eyes from the nude figures, and thinking how terribly they would have shocked the innocence of Cousin Jimmy.

“I always look at the river when I come here,” responded Mrs. Fowler, and her tone implied that the river at least was perfectly proper.  “A month ago the colours were wonderful.”

In the drive, which they could see from a corner view, a few old men, forgotten by time, warmed themselves in the sunlight.  Far below, the river reflected the changeable blue of the sky, while the autumnal pageantry on the horizon was fading slowly, like a burned-out fire, to the colour of ashes.

“Mother, dear, I’m so glad,” said a gay voice in the doorway, and turning quickly, Gabriella stared with wide eyes at the vision of Patty—­of Patty in some soft tea-gown, which borrowed its tone from the old tapestries on the wall, with her honey-coloured hair hanging over her shoulders, and her eyes as fresh as blue flowers in the ivory pallor of her face.

“And this is Gabriella,” she added, holding out her arms.  “What a darling you are to come so soon, Gabriella.”

She was a tall girl, so tall that she stooped to kiss Gabriella, whose height measured exactly five feet and seven inches, and she was beautiful with the faultless beauty which is seen only once or twice in a generation, but which, seen once, is never forgotten.  For Patty’s beauty, as a poet once wrote of a dead woman, was the beauty of destiny, the beauty that changes history and turns men into angels or into beasts.  Though Gabriella had seen lovely skins on Southern women—­rose-leaf skins, magnolia skins, peach-blossom skins—­she had seen nothing that resembled the exquisite colour and texture of Patty’s face.

“The curtains were finished, so I brought them,” said Mrs. Fowler, pointing to the bundle.  “I wanted Gabriella to see the Park.  You are coming to-night without fail, aren’t you, Patty?”

“Without fail, even if we have to walk,” answered Patty.  “You can’t imagine how much it costs to get about when one lives so far uptown.  That’s one reason we are anxious to move.  Billy has been looking for a studio for weeks, and, do you know, he has really found one at last.  Harry Allen is moving out of the Rubens Building, and we are going to take his studio on the top floor.  We’re awfully lucky, too, to get it, for it is the first vacancy there for years.”