ance of joyous triumph at
a somewhat older woman, whose place was next, and who
was listening with the amiable effacement of countenance
that is sometimes a more or less successful disguise for
chagrin. On this occasion it seemed to fail, for
Mademoiselle Palicsky turned her attention to Lucien and
her work again with a slight raising of the eyebrows and
a slighter sigh. Her face assumed a gentle melancholy,
as if she were pained at the exhibition of a weakness of
her sex; yet it was unnecessary to be an acute observer
to read there the hope that Lucien's significant phrase
had not by any chance escaped her neighbor.

"The drawing of the neck," Lucien went on, "is excellently
brutal." Nadie wished he would speak a little louder,
but Lucien always arranged the carrying power of his
voice according to the susceptibilities of the atelier.
He thrust his hands into his pockets and still stood
beside her, looking at her study of the nude model who
posed upon a table in the midst of the students. "In you,
mademoiselle," he added in a tone yet lower, "I find the
woman and the artist divorced. That is a vast advantage--an
immense source of power. I am growing more certain of
you; you are not merely cleverly eccentric as I thought.
You have a great deal that no one can teach you. You have
finished that--I wish to take it downstairs to show the
men. It will not be jeered at, I promise you."

"_Cher maitre!_ You mean it?"

"But certainly!"

The girl handed him the study with a look of almost
doglike gratitude in her narrow gray eyes. Lucien had
never said so much to her before, though the whole atelier
had noticed how often he had been coming to her easel
lately, and had disparaged her in corners accordingly.
She looked at the tiny silver watch she wore in a leather
strap on her left wrist--he had spent nearly five minutes
with her this time, watching her work and talking to her,
in itself a triumph. It was almost four o'clock, and the
winter daylight was going; presently they would all stop
work. Partly for the pleasure of being chaffed and envied
and complimented in the anteroom in the general washing
of brushes, and partly to watch Lucien's rapid progress
among the remaining easels, Mademoiselle Palicsky
deliberately sat down, in a prematurely vacant chair,
slung one slender little limb over the other, and waited.
As she sat there a generous thought rose above her
exultation. She hoped everybody else in the atelier h