ad
guessed what Lucien was saying to her all that while,
and had seen him carry off her day's work, but not the
little American. The little American, who was at least
thirteen inches taller than Mademoiselle Palicsky, was
sufficiently discouraged already, and it was pathetic,
in view of almost a year of failure, to see how she clung
to her ghost of a talent Besides, the little American
admired Nadie Palicsky, her friend, her comrade, quite
enough already.

Elfrida had heard, nevertheless. She listened eagerly,
tensely, as she always did when Lucien opened his lips
in her neighborhood. When she saw him take the sketch to
show in the men's atelier downstairs, to exhibit to that
horde of animals below, whose studies and sketches and
compositions were so constantly brought up for the stimulus
and instruction of Lucien's women students, she grew
suddenly so white that the girl who worked next her, a
straw-colored Swede, asked her if she were ill, and
offered her a little green bottle of salts of lavender.
"It's that beast of a calorifere," the Swede said, nodding
at the hideous black cylinder that stood near them,
"they will always make it too hot."

Elfrida waved the salts back hastily--Lucien was coming
her way. She worked seated, and as he seemed on the point
of passing with merely a casual glance and an ambiguous
"H'm!" she started up. The movement effectually arrested
him, unintentional though it seemed. He frowned slightly,
thrusting his hands deep into his coat-pockets, and looked
again.

"We must find a better place for you, mademoiselle; you
can make nothing of it here so close to the model, and
below him thus." He would have gone on, but in spite of
his intention to avert his eyes he caught the girl's
glance, and something infinitely appealing in it stayed
him again. "Mademoiselle," he said, with visible irritation,
"there is nothing to say that I have not said many times
already. Your drawing is still ladylike, your color is
still pretty, and, _sapristi!_ you have worked with me
a year! Still," he added, recollecting himself--Lucien
never lost a student by over-candor--"considering your
difficult place the shoulders are not so bad. _Continuez_,
mademoiselle."

The girl's eyes were fastened immovably upon her work as
she sat down again, painting rapidly in an ineffectual,
meaningless way, with the merest touch of color in her
brush. Her face glowed with the deepest shame that had
ever visited her. Luc