“Oh, Peggy, Peggy!  I can’t go.  They forgot the sleeves.”

She came down the stairway like a flower, but her eyes were wistful and troubled.

“Kenny, should I?”

“Should you what, dear?”

“Dance when—­when Uncle—­”

“If your heart is glad and your feet want to dance, mavourneen,” said Kenny gently, “then no conventional pretense of mourning shall stop them.  You were kind and merciful while he lived.  Even he, dear, would not ask more.”

“If my Victrola arm has been winding in vain while you two practiced half the floor off the studio,” put in Ann, “I shall be offended.  I dreamed last night that I was an organ-grinder teaching Sid to dance.”

Joan laughed and kissed her.

The Holbein Club accepted her with a hum of delight.

“She is beautiful!” said Jan.

“Beautiful, of course,” said Somebody.  “Any girl in Kenny’s life would be beautiful or she wouldn’t be there.”

As for Kenny, his path was pleasant, as it always was.  If a waving arm was not bidding for his attention, it was a laughing hail or a hearty hand upon his shoulder.  His bright dark face sparkled with the zest of popularity.

Joan thought him as care-free as a boy.

“We dance in the club gallery,” he told her, smiling at the look of wonder in her eyes.

“And the paintings and sculpture?”

“A members’ exhibition.  The sculptured lion staring from his pedestal at us is Jan’s.  Look at the superb muscle play of his flank!  The midsummer woods—­see, how well the lad has painted air!—­is Garry’s.  And my pine picture’s over there.”

“And Sid?”

Kenny danced her the length of the gallery.  A white line of sculpture gleamed on either side behind a rail of brass.

“Down here,” he said.  “I saved it for the last.  The beggar’s painted—­me!”

It was Kenny in a painter’s smock intent upon a palette, vividly, whimsically, delightfully Kenny.  There was tenderness and sympathy in Sid’s portrayal.

Joan clung to his hand in delight.

And was it all Bohemia, she asked.

Ah! admitted Kenny twinkling, there you had him.  Bohemia, he fancied, was always wherever you yourself were not.  The men and women who did big things were too busy for picturesque posing.  Bohemia, as legend read it, had to do with rags and dreams and ambition without effort, a shabby, down-at-heel pretension that glittered without gratifying.  The Bohemians of to-day were the failures of to-morrow.  And the crowd who lived at the Holbein Club lived, loved, worked and died much in the fashion of less gifted folk.  If there was a Bohemia of success, however, it danced here to-night.

But, girleen, the music was urging!  And who could resist the sweet wild delirium of a violin’s call?  Certainly not an Irishman intent upon a moonbeam imprisoned in a girl’s bright hair.  But one sound sweeter!