e two experienced the recorded fluctuations
of their romance in private, Ralph Gowan had followed Phil into the
studio.

They found Mollie there on going into the room; and Mollie lying upon
the sofa asleep, with her brown head upon a big soft purple cushion,
was quite worthy a second glance. She had been rather overpowered in the
parlor by the presence of Ralph Gowan, and, knowing there was a fire
in the studio, and a couch drawn near it, she had retired there, and,
appropriating a pile of cushions, had dropped asleep, and lay there
curled up among them.

Seeing her, Gowan found himself smiling faintly. Mollie amused him just
as she amused Dolly. It was so difficult a matter to assign her any
settled position in the world; She was taller than the other girls,
and far larger and more statuesque; indeed, there were moments when she
seemed to be almost imposing in presence, but this only rendered her
still more a charming incongruity. She might have carried herself like a
royal princess, but she blushed up to the tips of her ears at a glance,
and was otherwise as innocently awkward as a beauty may be. She was not
fond of strangers either, and generally lapsed into silence when spoken
to. Public admiration only disconcerted her, and made her pout, and the
unceremonious but friendly compliments of Phil's brethren in art were
her special grievance.

"They stare at me, and stare at me, and stare at me," she complained,
pettishly, to Dolly, "and some of them say things to me. I wish they
would attend to their pictures and leave me alone."

But she had never evinced any particular dislike to Ralph Gowan. She was
overpowered by a secret sense of his vast superiority to the generality
of mankind, but she rather admired him upon the whole. She liked to hear
him talk to Dolly, and she approved of his style. It was such a novel
sort of thing to meet with a man who was not shabby, and whose clothes
seemed made for him and were worn with a grace. He was handsome, too,
and witty and polite, and his cool, comfortable manner reminded her
vaguely of Dolly's own. So she used to sit and listen to the two as they
chatted, and in the end her guileless admiration of Dolly's eligible
Philistine became pretty thoroughly established.

When the sound of advancing footsteps roused her from her nap she woke
with great tranquillity, and sat up rubbing her drowsy eyes serenely for
a minute or so before she discovered that Phil had a companion. Bu