cy; the Mandan Flats
were really not two years old, and Mrs. Maybough had taken her
apartment in the spring and had been in it only a few weeks.

"Now all this is _mamma_," Charmian said, suffering Cornelia to pause
for a backward glance at the rooms as she pushed open a door at the
side of the library. "I simply endure it because it's in the bargain.
But it's no more me than my gown is. This is where I _stay_, when I'm
with mamma, but I'm going to show you where I _live_, where I _dream_."
She glided down the electric-lighted corridor where they found
themselves, and apologized over her shoulder to Cornelia behind her:
"Of course, you can't have an attic in a flat; and anything like rain
on the roof is practically impossible; but I've come as near to it as I
could. Be careful! Here are the stairs." She mounted eight or ten steps
that crooked upward, and flung wide a door at the top of the landing.
It gave into a large room fronting northward and lighted with one wide
window; the ceiling sloped and narrowed down to this from the
quadrangular vault, and the cool gray walls rose not much above
Cornelia's head where they met the roof. They were all stuck about with
sketches in oil and charcoal. An easel with a canvas on it stood
convenient to the light; a flesh-tinted lay-figure in tumbled drapery
drooped limply in a corner; a table littered with palettes and brushes
and battered tubes of color was carelessly pushed against the window;
there were some lustrous rugs hung up beside the door; the floor was
bare except for a great tiger-skin, with the head on, that sprawled in
front of the fire-place. This was very simple, with rough iron
fire-dogs; the low mantel was scattered with cigarettes, cigars in
Chinese bronze vases at either end, and midway a medley of pipes,
long-stemmed in clay and stubbed in briar-wood.

"Good gracious!" said Cornelia. "Do you smoke?"

"Not yet," Charmian answered gravely, "but I'm going to learn:
Bernhardt does. These are just some pipes that I got the men at the
Synthesis to give me; pipes are so full of character. And isn't this
something _like_?" She invited Cornelia to a study of the place by
turning about and looking at it herself. "It seemed as if it never
_would_ come together, at one time. Everything was in it, just as it
should be; and then I found it was the ridiculous ceiling that was the
trouble. It came to me like a flash, what to do, and I got this canvas
painted the color of the