sed Drene, with a whimsical glance at the
photograph on the wall.

"Carpeaux has nothing on this young lady," insisted Quair flippantly;
and he pivoted on his heel and sat down beside the model. Once or twice
the two others, consulting before the wax group, heard the girl's light,
untroubled laughter behind their backs gaily responsive to Quair's
wit. Perhaps Quair's inheritance had been humor, but to some it seemed
perilously akin to mother-wit.

The pockets of Guilder's loose, ill-fitting clothes bulged with linen
tracings and rolls of blue-prints. He and Drene consulted over these for
a while, semi-conscious of Quair's bantering voice and the girl's easily
provoked laughter behind them. And, finally:

"All right, Guilder," said Drene briefly. And the firm of celebrated
architects prepared to evacuate the studio--Quair exhibiting symptoms of
incipient skylarking, in which he was said to be at his best.

"Drop in on me at the office some time," he suggested to the youthful
model, in a gracious tone born of absolute self-satisfaction.

"For luncheon or dinner?" retorted the girl, with smiling audacity.

"You may stay to breakfast also--"

"Oh, come on," drawled Guilder, taking his colleague's elbow.

The sculptor yawned as Quair went out: then he closed the door then
celebrated firm of architects, and wandered back rather aimlessly.

For a while he stood by the great window, watching the pigeons on
neighboring roof. Presently he returned to his table, withdrew the
dancing figure with its graceful, wide flung arms, set it upon the
squeaky revolving table once more, and studied it, yawning at intervals.

The girl got up from the sofa behind him, went to the model-stand, and
mounted it. For a few moments she was busy adjusting her feet to the
chalk marks and blocks. Finally she took the pose. She always seemed
inclined to be more or less vocal while Drene worked; her voice, if
untrained, was untroubled. Her singing had never bothered Drene, nor,
until the last few days, had he even particularly noticed her blithe
trilling--as a man a field, preoccupied, is scarcely aware of the wild
birds' gay irrelevancy along the way.

He happened to notice it now, and a thought passed through his mind that
the country must be very lovely in the mild spring sunshine.

As he worked, the brief visualization of young grass and the faint blue
of skies, evoked, perhaps, by the girl's careless singing, made for his
dull concentrat