Patricia occupied herself getting her tools from the convenient shelf
on her own locker, hoping that the talk was not to end there.

Griffin emerged as suddenly as she had disappeared. "But it's the men
that spoil her," she went on as though no interruption had occurred.
"They're polite to her because she's so everlastingly gloomy. Same
sort of politeness they'd show to a hearse, you know--respectful but
not companionable."

Patricia gave an exclamation. "I believe I've seen her!" she cried.
"She wears a long cloak and a hat with a big black plume, doesn't she?
We noticed her at lunch and wondered what was the matter with her."

"Just a case of permanent glooms, if you ask me," replied Griffin
airily. "She loves melancholy, though she is an awfully good sort,
too. She gets on my nerves, though, she's so _brittle_."

Patricia puckered her brow inquiringly.

"Breaks a bone every time anyone looks hard at her," explained the
other, shoving the protruding conglomeration of her locker inside and
snapping the door quickly on it. "She's more bones than the average,
and she breaks them regularly every time she learns the name of a new
one. I think she oughtn't to be allowed in the dissecting room for any
consideration. She's just out of splints now for a right arm fracture,
and, believe me, she worked all the time with her left."

"How could she?" wondered Patricia, feeling awed by this devotion to
art.

"She couldn't," grinned Griffin. "That's the point. She's so taken up
with her pose as suffering martyr that she overlooks a trifle like good
work. Heavens, there's the gong! I've kept you here gassing when I
know you're crazy to get to work. Come along in, and I'll help you set
up your stand before the model poses again."

Patricia followed her into the big, clay-soiled, dusty room, clutching
her new smooth wooden tools with nervous fingers.

On the large revolving model stand in the center sat a dark, slender
Russian-looking young man, indifferent to the group that with their
tall-wheeled stands were circled about him. He sat with his narrow
blue eyes sleepily fixed on the wall, regardless alike of the sturdy
smocked men and slender boys in full blue-paint jackets, as of the
equally silent and clayey girls and women that scrutinized him with
earnestly squinting eyelids. The only creature in the room that seemed
to evoke the slightest responsive flicker of intelligence was the
black-robed, gray-apro