NG LOOSE WORKING
APRON."]

CHAPTER VII

IN JOYCE'S STUDIO

The short winter day was almost at an end. High up in the top flat of a
New York apartment house, Joyce Ware sat in her studio, making the most
of those last few moments of daylight. In the downstairs flats the
electric lights were already on. She moved her easel nearer the window,
thankful that no sky-scraper loomed between it and the fading sunset,
for she needed a full half hour to complete her work.

There were a number of good pictures on the walls, among them some
really fine old Dutch interiors, but any artist would have turned from
the best of them to study the picture silhouetted against the western
window. The girlish figure enveloped in a long loose working apron was
all in shadow, but the light, slanting across the graceful head bending
towards the easel, touched the brown hair with glints of gold, and gave
the profile of the earnest young face, the distinctive effect of a
Rembrandt portrait.

Wholly unconscious of the fact, Joyce plied her brush with capable
practised fingers, so absorbed in her task that she heard nothing of the
clang and roar of the streets below, seething with holiday traffic. The
elevator opposite her door buzzed up and down unheeded. She did not even
notice when it stopped on her floor, and some one walked across the
corridor with a heavy tread. But the whirr of her door bell brought her
to herself with a start, and she looked up impatiently, half inclined to
pay no attention to the interruption. Then thinking it might be some
business message which she could not afford to delay, she hurried to the
door, brush and palette still in hand.

"Why, Phil Tremont!" she exclaimed, so surprised at sight of the tall
young man who filled the doorway that she stood for an instant in
open-mouthed wonder. "Where did _you_ drop from? I thought you were in
the wilds of Oregon or some such borderland. Come in."

"I got in only a few hours ago," he answered, following her down the
hall and into the studio. "I have only been in town long enough to make
my report at the office. I'm on my way out to Stuart's to spend
Christmas with him and Eugenia, but I couldn't resist the temptation of
staying over a train to run in and take a peep at you. It has been
nearly six months, you know, since I've had such a chance."

Joyce went back to her easel, as he slipped off his overcoat. "Don't
think that because I keep on working that I'm not