arm, ma petite, if there is a modern
sculptor who can do it. You might suggest it to the two Russian
cognoscenti, who have been hovering around him as if they wanted to buy
him as well as his work. Madame La Princesse is rich enough to indulge
her artistic taste."

"It is a countryman of mine," said Helen simply.

"He certainly does not speak French," said mademoiselle mischievously.

"Nor think it," responded Helen with equal vivacity. Nevertheless, she
wished she had seen him alone.

She thought nothing more of him that day in her finishing exercises. But
the next morning as she went to open her window after dressing, she
drew back with a new consciousness, and then, making a peephole in the
curtain, looked over the opposite roofs. She had seen them many times
before, but now they had acquired a new picturesqueness, which as her
view was, of course, the reverse of the poor painter's sketch, must have
been a transfigured memory of her own. Then she glanced curiously along
the line of windows level with hers. All these, however, with their
occasional revelations of the menage behind them, were also familiar to
her, but now she began to wonder which was his. A singular instinct at
last impelled her to lift her eyes. Higher in the corner house, and so
near the roof that it scarcely seemed possible for a grown man to stand
upright behind it, was an oeil de boeuf looking down upon the other
roofs, and framed in that circular opening like a vignette was the
handsome face of Major Ostrander. His eyes seemed to be turned towards
her window. Her first impulse was to open it and recognize him with a
friendly nod. But an odd mingling of mischief and shyness made her turn
away quickly.

Nevertheless, she met him the next morning walking slowly so near her
house that their encounter might have been scarcely accidental on his
part. She walked with him as far as the Conservatoire. In the light
of the open street she thought he looked pale and hollow-cheeked;
she wondered if it was from his enforced frugality, and was trying to
conceive some elaborate plan of obliging him to accept her hospitality
at least for a single meal, when he said:--

"I think you have brought me luck, Miss Maynard."

Helen opened her eyes wonderingly.

"The two Russian connoisseurs who stared at us so rudely were pleased,
however, to also stare at my work. They offered me a fabulous sum for
one or two of my sketches. It didn't seem to me quite the sq