orous composition with a touch of point or a sweeping erasure.
Strength, knowledge, command were his; he knew it, and he knew the
pleasure of it.

Having finished the drawing, he unpinned the pencil studies, replacing
each by its detail in color--charming studies executed with sober
precision, yet sparkling with a gayety that no reticence and self-denial
could dim. He dusted the drawing, tacked on tracing-paper, and began to
transfer, whistling softly as he bent above his work.

Sunlight fell across the corner of the table, glittering among glasses,
saucers of porcelain, crystal bowls in which brushes dipped in brilliant
colors had been rinsed. To escape the sun he rolled the table back a
little way, then continued, using the ivory-pointed tracing-stylus. He
worked neither rapidly nor slowly; there was a leisurely precision in
his progress; pencil, brush, tracer, eraser, did their errands surely,
steadily. Yet already he had the reputation of being the most rapid
worker in his craft.

During intervals when he leaned back to stretch his muscles and light a
cigarette his eyes wandered towards a window just across the court,
where sometimes a girl sat. She was there now, rocking in a dingy
rocking-chair, stitching away by her open window. Once or twice she
turned her head and glanced across at him. After an interval he laid his
cigarette on the edge of a saucer and resumed his work. In the golden
gloom of the studio the stillness was absolute, save for the delicate
stir of a curtain rustling at his open window. A breeze moved the hair
on his temples; his eyes wandered towards the window across the court.
The window was so close that they could have conversed together had they
known each other.

In the court new grass was growing; grimy shrubbery had freshened into
green; a tree was already in full leaf. Here and there cats sprawled on
sun-warmed roofs, sparrows chirked under eaves from whence wisps of
litter trailed, betraying hidden nests.

Below his window, hanging in heavy twists, a wistaria twined, its long
bunches of lilac-tinted blossoms alive with bees.

His eyes followed the flight of a shabby sparrow. "If I were a bird," he
said, aloud, "I'd not be idiot enough to live in a New York back yard."
And he resumed his work, whistling.

But the languor of spring was in his veins, and he bent forward again,
sniffing the mild air. The witchery of spring had also drawn his
neighbor to her window, where she leaned o