in the studio upstairs where Margot Gilberte plied Cellini’s art, embedding pennyweights of metal in hot pitch that, cooling, held it like a dark and shapeless hand while Margot sculptured elfin leaves and scrolls upon it.  Curious things came to the jeweler’s desk where Margot worked; jewels cut and uncut, soft-colored sea-pebbles, natural lumps of greenish copper, silver and gold and brass (to Margot’s eye there were no baser metals) malachite and coral and New Zealand jade.  Joan handled them all with gasps of reverence.

“And this, Margot?  How green it is!”

“A peridot for a dewdrop in a leaf of gold.  And there, Question-mark, are the pink tourmalines I propose to use for rosebuds in this necklace of silver leaves.”

“And blue sapphires!”

“They are for pools of sea-water in some golden seaweed and the pearls are for buds in some cherry leaves.”

“What an odd frail little tool, Margot!”

“I made it myself,” said Margot.  “And now, cherie, if you don’t run along to Madame Morny, Kenny will scold me.”

She delighted Madame Morny with her willingness to work.  She delighted Kenny with her willingness to play.  Nothing tired her.  Together they roamed to the quaint little restaurants of Bohemia; the Italian table d’hotes where Kenny was inclined to twinkle at the youthful art students who affected pretentious ties, the quiet old German restaurant that once had been a church, Chinatown where you ate unskillfully with chopsticks upon a table of onyx, and the Turkish restaurant where everything, Sid said, was lamb.

“Garry found it,” he insisted.  “I didn’t.  I’m glad I didn’t, though a lot of the Salmagundi men go over there and like it.  The art students too.  Forty cents.  Proprietor’s the real thing—­he wears a fizz.”

“Fuzz, darlin’,” corrected Kenny gently.

“Fez!” sputtered Sid in disgust.  “Fez, of course.  Everything’s got lamb in it, even the pastry and the coffee.  I swear it has!  I—­I hate lamb.  Didn’t know the Turks went in for it so much, did you, Kenny?  Jan computed a table of lamb percentages on the menu and I felt like bleating.  ’Pon my word I did.  Menu’s got a glossary and needs it.  Pilaf—­that’s rice.  Lamb’s something else.  No, pilaf’s lamb, and rice is something else.  Oh, hanged if I know.  Lamb’s lamb no matter how you spell it.”

“Come along with us,” suggested Kenny.  His kindliness of late had startled more than one, accustomed to his irresponsible caprices.

“Please do!” said Joan; and Sid, delighted, and amazed as always, repudiated at once his hatred of lamb.  It was nourishing, he recalled at once with a brazen air of sincerity, and the Turks disguise it in amazingly enticing ways.

Joan laughed.

“Sid,” she said, “you’re a dear, blessed fibber and we want you with us.”

Her poise and adaptability were startling.  Her simplicity won them all.  To the girls who lived in Ann’s studio building she seemed all laughter and happiness and breathless eagerness to please.