“You are not an artist?”

“No; an artist creates, and I only copy, and that in a small way.  Any one can learn to prepare casts; but to create a bust or a statue—­that is to say, a fine one—­a man must have genius.”

“You have no genius?”

“Not a grain.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said Margaret, with a disappointed look.  “But perhaps it will come,” she added encouragingly.  “I have read that nearly all great artists and poets are almost always modest.  They know better than anybody else how far they fall short of what they intend, and so they don’t put on airs.  You don’t, either.  I like that in you.  May be you have genius without knowing it, Mr. Shackford.”

“It is quite without knowing it, I assure you!” protested Richard, with suppressed merriment.  “What an odd girl!” he thought.  “She is actually talking to me like a mother!”

The twinkling light in the young man’s eyes, or something that jarred in his manner, caused Margaret at once to withdraw into herself.  She went silently about the room, examining the tools and patterns; then, nearing the door, suddenly dropped Richard a quaint little courtesy, and was gone.

This was the colorless beginning of a friendship that was destined speedily to be full of tender lights and shadows, and to flow on with unsuspected depth.  For several days Richard saw nothing more of Margaret, and scarcely thought of her.  The strangle little figure was fading out of his mind, when, one afternoon, it again appeared at his door.  This time Margaret had left something of her sedateness behind; she struck Richard as being both less ripe and less immature than he had fancied; she interested rather than amused him.  Perhaps he had been partially insulated by his own shyness on the first occasion, and had caught only a confused and inaccurate impression of Margaret’s personality.  She remained half an hour in the workshop, and at her departure omitted the formal courtesy.

After this, Margaret seldom let a week slip without tapping once or twice at the studio, at first with some pretext or other, and then with no pretense whatever.  When Margaret had disburdened herself of excuses for dropping in to watch Richard mold his leaves and flowers, she came oftener, and Richard insensibly drifted into the habit of expecting her on certain days, and was disappointed when she failed to appear.  His industry had saved him, until now, from discovering how solitary his life really was; for his life was as solitary—­as solitary as that of Margaret, who lived in the great house with only her father, the two servants, and an episodical aunt.  The mother was long ago dead; Margaret could not recollect when that gray headstone, with blotches of rusty-green moss breaking out over the lettering, was not in the churchyard; and there never had been any brothers or sisters.