hours with her before she
began to appreciate what a bad atmosphere she had always breathed--bad
for a woman who has her way to make in the world, or indeed for any
woman not willing to be content as mere more or less shiftless, more or
less hypocritical and pretentious, dependent and parasite. Mrs.
Brindley--well bred and well educated--knew all the little matters
which Mildred had been taught to regard as the whole of a lady's
education. But Mildred saw that these trifles were but a trifling
incident in Mrs. Brindley's knowledge. She knew real things, this
woman who was a thorough-going housekeeper and who trebled her income
by giving music lessons a few hours a day to such pupils as she thought
worth the teaching. When she spoke, she always said something one of
the first things noticed by Mildred, who, being too lazy to think
except as her naturally good mind insisted on exercising itself,
usually talked simply to kill time and without any idea of getting
anywhere. But while Cyrilla--without in the least intending it--roused
her to a painful sense of her own limitations, she did not discourage
her. Mildred also began to feel that in this new atmosphere of ideas,
of work, of accomplishment, she would rapidly develop into a different
sort of person. It was extremely fortunate for her, thought she, that
she was living with such a person as Cyrilla Brindley. In the old
atmosphere, or with any taint of it, she would have been unable to
become a serious person. She would simply have dawdled along,
twaddling about "art" and seriousness and careers and sacrifice,
content with the amateur's methods and the amateur's results--and
deluding herself that she was making progress. Now--It was as
different as public school from private school--public school where the
mind is rudely stimulated, private school where it is sedulously
mollycoddled. She had come out of the hothouse into the open.

At first she thought that Jennings was to be as great a help to her as
Cyrilla Brindley. Certainly if ever there was a man with the air of a
worker and a place with the air of a workshop, that man and that place
were Eugene Jennings and his studio in Carnegie Hall. When Mildred
entered, on that Saturday morning, at exactly half-past ten,
Jennings--in a plain if elegant house-suit--looked at her, looked at
the clock, stopped a girl in the midst of a burst of tremulous noisy
melody.

"That will do, Miss Bristow," said he. "You hav