The Painter, looking at her indifferently, was roused to a sudden interest by her face.  Her features and complexion were certainly pleasing, but the untidy mass of straggling hair topped by a battered straw sailor hat diverted the attention of a casual observer from her really unusual delicacy of feature and coloring.  She was tall and slim, although now she was dwarfed by Miss Snell’s gaunt figure.  A worn dress and shabby green cape fastened at the neck by a button hanging precariously on its last thread completed her very unsuitable winter attire.  Outside the great studio window a cold December twilight was settling down over roofs covered with snow and icicles, and the Painter shivered involuntarily as he noticed the insufficiency of her wraps for such weather, and got up to stir the fire which glowed in the big stove.

In one corner his model waited patiently for the guests to depart, and he now dismissed her for the day, eliciting faint protestations from Miss Snell, who, however, was settling down comfortably in an easy-chair by the fire, with an evident intention of staying indefinitely.  Miss Price’s large, somewhat expressionless blue eyes were taking in the whole studio, and the Painter could feel that she was distinctly disappointed by her inspection.  She had evidently anticipated something much grander, and this bare room was not the ideal place she had fancied the studio of a world-renowned painter would prove to be.

Bare painted walls, a peaked roof with a window reaching far overhead, a polished floor, one or two chairs and a divan, the few necessary implements of his profession, and many canvases faced to the wall, but little or no bric-a-brac or delightful studio properties.  The Painter was also conscious that her inspection included him personally, and was painfully aware that she was regarding him with the same feeling of disappointment; she quite evidently thought him too young and insignificant looking for a person of his reputation.

Miss Snell had not given him time to reply to Miss Price’s remark about her study at Julian’s, but prattled on about her own work and the unsurmountable difficulties that lay in the way of a woman’s successful career as a painter.

“I have been studying for years under ——­,” said Miss Snell, “and really I have no time to lose.  It will end by my simply going to him and saying, quite frankly:  ’Now, Monsieur ——­, I have been in your atelier for four years, and I can’t afford to waste another minute.  There are no two ways about it.  You positively must tell me how to do it.  You really must not keep me waiting any longer.  I insist upon it.’  How discouraging it is!” she sighed.  “It seems quite impossible to find any one who is willing to give the necessary information.”

Miss Price’s wandering eyes had at last found a resting-place on a large, half-finished canvas standing on an easel.  Something attractive in the pose and turn of her head made the Painter watch her as he lent a feeble attention to Miss Snell’s conversation.