ad been three years in the Quartier Latin.

CHAPTER VI

If Lucien had examined Miss Bell's work during the week
of her experiment with Anglo-Parisian journalism, he
would have observed that it grew gradually worse as the
days went on. The devotion of the small hours to composition
does not steady one's hand for the reproduction of the
human muscles, or inform one's eye as to the correct
manipulation of flesh tints. Besides, the model suffered
from Elfrida an unconscious diminution of enthusiasm.
She was finding her first serious attempt at writing more
absorbing than she would have believed possible, and she
felt that she was doing it better than she expected. She
was hardly aware of the moments that slipped by while
she dabbled aimlessly in unconsidered color meditating
a phrase, or leaned back and let nothing interfere with
her apprehension of the atelier with the other reproductive
instinct. She did not recognize the deterioration in her
work, either; and at the very moment when Nadie Palicsky,
observing Lucien's neglect of her, inwardly called him
a brute, Elfrida was to leave the atelier an hour earlier
for the sake of the more urgent thing which she had to
do. She finished it in five days, and addressed it to
Frank Parke with a new and uplifting sense of
accomplishment. The ever fresh miracle happened to her,
too, in that the working out of one article begot the
possibilities of half a dozen more, and the next day saw
her well into another. In posting the first she had a
premonition of success. She saw it as it would infallibly
appear in a conspicuous place in _Raffini's Chronicle_,
and heard the people of the American Colony wondering
who in the world could have written it. She conceived
that it would fill about two columns and a half. On
Saturday afternoon, when Kendal joined her crossing the
courtyard of the atelier, she was preoccupied with the
form of her rebuff to any inquiries that might be made
as to whether she had written it.

They walked on together, talking casually of casual
things. Kendal, glancing every now and then at the wet
study Elfrida was carrying home, felt himself distinctly
thankful that she did not ask his opinion of it, as she
had, to his embarrassment once or twice before; though
it was so very bad that he was half disposed to abuse it
without permission. Miss Bell seemed persistently
interested in other things, however--the theatres, the
ecclesiastical bill before the C