fe," he insisted.

"You're very young, aren't you?" she retorted. "Quite a boy, I should
think. Sister said so. You'll see, though. It isn't one bit more a
happening life than ours up at Kensington. Yours must have been the
happening life, there in the West. Tell me about Clarence. Is he a real
cowboy yet? He says he's a real one, but I couldn't believe it. Those I
saw in the Wild West show looked as if they'd had to study it a long
time. Can Clarence lasso a wild cow yet?" She leaned toward him with
friendly curiosity. They were amazed half an hour later when they looked
up to find Mrs. Laithe standing by them, the only other occupant of the
room.

"You must come oftener," urged Mrs. Laithe. Her sister gave him her hand
with a grip that made him wonder at its force.

He pushed through the evening crowd of Broadway, pleasantly reviewing
his talk with the girl. At Forty-second Street it occurred to him that
this was the first time he had walked the street unconscious of its
throng. He had been self-occupied, like most of its members.

But the girl, he reflected, would go away. The friend, the near one, to
take and give, man or woman, was still to be found.

CHAPTER XIV

THE TRICK OF COLOR

The men of the Rookery toiled, in the season of toil, with that blithe
singleness of purpose they brought to their play. Ewing learned this the
following morning when, after an hour in his own place, correcting some
of those hasty first arrangements, he began an idling tour of the other
studios. These occupied the two upper floors of the building, those
beneath flaunting signs of trade on the ground-glass doors one passed in
the long climb from the street.

From Baldwin's studio--Baldwin was sketching in from the model a
kneeling Filipino prisoner with head thrown back and hands bound behind
him--Ewing descended to Chalmers's place to find its owner finishing,
with many swift pen strokes, the filmy gown of a debutante who underwent
with downcast eyes the appraisal of an elderly beau. This absorbed and
serious Chalmers was so unlike the frivolous night bird who reviled his
art editor that Ewing forbore to distract him.

Griggs, in the studio back of Chalmers, was soberly work-bent over the
wash-drawing of a sword fight, an illustration for what he confided to
Ewing was the latest "high boots and hardware novel."

"One lovely thing," explained the artist, "they all take the same
pictures--the plighted troth in the cha