now as little how to drink a liqueur
brandy as we know how to buy it. We gulp it from these straight glasses,
when it should be taken in sips from a glass small at the top, a glass
first warmed in the palm of the hand. Only so may we capture the
bouquet, that elusive fragrance of the May-vine blossom, that wraith of
spring-perfumes."

Ewing was still unjustified when the waiter helped them on with their
coats, and then he was dismayed to observe that Teevan apparently meant
to leave him. The little man held out his hand with "So glad to have had
your company--another time--I shall see you again, I hope."

"Please come back with me. I'd like to talk to you--to ask your advice."
He felt himself an outcast.

Teevan's response, a surprised but coldly polite assent, did not lighten
his dejection as they walked back to the studio in silence.

But once there the little man no longer avoided talk of his young
friend's fiasco. He let it be seen that another illusion, one fondly
cherished, he need not say, had been shattered. He gave the impression
that he had talked of other things to forget this--an inadequate device,
he let it be inferred.

Ewing confessed his own despondency of the night before, but told how a
woman had given him new courage.

"Not the least injury they do us," remarked Teevan of women, somewhat
snappishly, "is to wheedle us into taking our failures lightly." That
were especially baneful to the artist, it seemed; by his very
temperament was he exposed to their blandishing sophistries. The artist
cult should be a priesthood, aloof, austere, celibate--deaf to the woman
cries of "Never mind!" and "Courage!" and "Another day!" All very well
that, but they shut their pretty eyes to real failures, or, at most,
survey them with a tender air of belittlement that leaves the defeated
one blind to their significance. Speaking largely, the society of women
should be shunned by earnest men intent on achievement.

Ewing began to feel that possibly he had taken heart too readily. He was
willing to believe this if it would restore him to the little man's
esteem. He pointed timidly to the drawing he had begun that morning,
eager for the word of praise he believed it to merit.

"Oh, _that_!" Teevan drawled the words, with lifted brows; then went on
to speak of Jean Francois Millet, unprosperous villager of Barbizon. He
tried--unsuccessfully--to recall an instance when that painter had
debased his art. Not once had he