, whom you _know_. She has made the
nymphs and goddesses for a _thousand_ pictures, but now she is so much
fat that the messieurs will have her only for the head, although she
still poses for the _ensemble_ in the ateliers des dames."

Here the best Christ in Paris grinned satanically as a polyglot howl
went up from among the students.

"That's his tit for the tat of the 'Cheshire cat,'" laughed Madame
Lafarge, a French-American Corinne with an all-French moustache.

"We won't have Lucreza again if she is too fat to pose for the nude
except in a _ladies'_ studio," snapped the elder Swede.

"Oh, I have forgotten to say zat she has upset ze pail since eight
days," chuckled the man.

"Upset the pail?" And twenty pairs of eyes looked full of
interrogation-points.

"Giggle! giggle! giggle!" came sputteringly from behind Concordia's
easel as she gasped, "Don't you understand? He has improved his English
among the Americans in Gerome's studio, and he means she kicked the
bucket eight days ago."

"Quelle langue! quelle _langue est la langue_ Americaine!" sniffed the
elder Swede, wiping off a brushful of "turps" in her back hair.

Paletta twisted her head so as to peer through the forest of easels at
the last speaker.

"What daubs _she_ must make!" she thought, gazing at spectacled green
eyes and hay-colored hair _a la Chinoise_ with her fixed idea that "an
artistic nature always wrought a semblance of its own beauty upon its
outward form."

"What _was_ the Greek religion?" questioned a girlish voice.

Paletta twisted her neck again. "What _lovely_ ideals must blossom upon
_her_ _canvases_!" she thought as she saw a fair vision of rose-tints,
creamy texture and sculptured lines ensphered in a halo of golden hair.

"Who is that poor woman who has so mistaken her vocation?" she asked
with compassionate gesture toward the coiffure _a la Chinoise_.

"That? Oh, that's the celebrated Swedish artist, Miss Thingumbobbia, of
whom you have heard, of course. She returns to Stockholm next week to
paint the king's portrait. Mon Dieu! but I would give all my hair for
the genius of her little finger!" answered pretty Mademoiselle Hubert,
scraping her palette viciously, as if it were responsible for her
artistic inferiority to the gifted Thingumbobbia.

"O-o-o-h!" gasped Paletta. "But who is the sweet creature with golden
hair, who looks infused with fair ideals to her very finger-tips?"

[Illustration: AN AMIABLE MADONNA!]