-caught, or wandering into unaccustomed
heights, high in the blue a white butterfly glimmered, still mounting to
infinite altitudes, fluttering, breeze-blown, a silvery speck adrift.

"Like a poor soul aspiring," she thought listlessly, watching with dark
eyes over which the lids dropped lazily at moments, only to lift again
as her gaze reverted to the man above.

She thought about him, too; she usually did--about his niceness to her,
his never-to-be-forgotten kindness; her own gratitude to him for her
never-to-be-forgotten initiation.

It seemed scarcely possible that two months had passed since her
novitiate--that two months ago she still knew nothing of the people, the
friendships, the interest, the surcease from loneliness and hopeless
apathy, that these new conditions had brought to her.

Had she known Louis Neville only two months? Did all this new buoyancy
date from two short months' experience--this quickened interest in life,
this happy development of intelligence so long starved, this unfolding
of youth in the atmosphere of youth? She found it difficult to realise,
lying there so contentedly, so happily, following, with an interest and
appreciation always developing, the progress of the work.

Already, to herself, she could interpret much that she saw in this new
world. Cant phrases, bits of studio lore, artists' patter, their ways
of looking at things, their manners of expression, their mannerisms,
their little vanities, their ideas, ideals, aspirations, were fast
becoming familiar to her. Also she was beginning to notice and secretly
to reflect on their generic characteristics--their profoundly serious
convictions concerning themselves and their art modified by surface
individualities; their composite lack of humour--exceptions like Ogilvy
and Annan, and even Neville only proving the rule; their simplicity,
running the entire gamut from candour to stupidity; their patience which
was half courage, half a capacity for suffering; and, in the latter,
more woman-like than like a man.

Simplicity, courage, lack of humour--those appeared to be the
fundamentals characterising the ensemble--supplemented by the extremes
of restless intelligence and grim conservatism.

And the whole fabric seemed to be founded not on industry but on impulse
born of sentiment. In this new, busy, inspiring, delightful world logic
became a synthesis erected upon some inceptive absurdity, carried
solemnly to a picturesque and errone