AMONG the excitements of Tory’s visit to New York was a call she was to make upon an artist friend of her father’s.

Pleased with several of the sketches Tory had made during the past summer in camp, Mr. Drew desired an opinion upon her work from some one whose judgment he trusted. He knew himself to be too interested to be a good critic of his daughter’s gift. Now and then he believed himself too severe, that he expected more artistic gift than was possible in one of Tory’s age. Again he feared that his own devotion blinded him to conspicuous faults in her work.

So Tory brought with her a letter from her father to Philip Winslow. She was to call by appointment on a certain afternoon at his studio in the downtown section of the city.

Dorothy accompanied her, and the two girls discovered the house without difficulty, an old, somewhat dilapidated building, with the80 paint peeling from the house and a long flight of steps leading from the front door.

Philip Winslow was not a successful artist from the standpoint of worldly prosperity. His painting had never met with the recognition that his fellow-artists believed should have been his. He had, however, chosen to do the character of work he liked without consideration of the public.

More popular and with a reputation in two continents, nevertheless Tory’s father considered his friend a greater painter than himself. If it were possible and he were willing at any time to accept her as a pupil, Mr. Drew greatly desired Tory to study with the other man. Armed with half a dozen sketches and her letter, Tory and Dorothy started up the long flight of steps. The house was five stories high. One saw from a large north window of glass that the studio was at the top.

The girls had been going out constantly ever since their arrival, not only in the daytime, but nightly visits with Mr. Fenton to the different theaters.

The excitement seemed not to have had any disastrous effect upon Tory; she was gayer and more full of energy and enthusiasm with each passing hour.

81 The same thing was not true of Dorothy McClain. Dorothy was an outdoor person who had always lived in a small village. The crowding, the noises and the restlessness of the city she found very tiring.

On this especial expedition Tory had not considered it wise that Dorothy accompany her. At lunch she had observed how pale and weary she looked, suggesting that Dorothy lie down and try to sleep while she was making her visit.

The proposal required a good deal of unselfishness upon Tory’s part. Very especially she wished to have Dorothy with her during the approaching interview.

She was nervous over meeting a strange artist and exhibiting her own work. The visit in itself would not have troubled her. She had heard her father talk of Philip Winslow many times. He owned several of the other man’s pictures. What was embarrassing was to show him her sketches. As each hour passed and the time drew nearer she became more convinced they had better have been relegated to the trash basket.

She could not be sorry, therefore, when Dorothy utterly declined to consider the idea of giving up the trip. She had never been82 inside an artist’s studio in her entire existence, and she wanted to know what this artist thought of Tory’s gift.

Moreover, Mr. Fenton had a business engagement at the same hour and would not have been willing to permit Tory to keep her appointment alone.

In the climb up the stairs Dorothy chanced to be in the lead. Now and then she seemed tired and stopped for a moment to rest and get her breath.

The character of the place was not the surprise to Tory that it was to the other girl. In Paris and London Tory had been in old houses converted into lodgings as poor and dark as the present one. She knew that one might open a door and find an apartment artistically furnished and extremely comfortable. Again, one might chance upon a room bare and sordid, if its occupant had been in ill luck and unable to dispose of a picture, a poem, or a play that he had thought he would be pretty sure to sell.

At the end of the third flight of steps suddenly Dorothy sat down. She was biting her lips and had grown so pale that Tory was alarmed.

“Good gracious, Dorothy dear, what is the83 matter? Can’t you go on? Had we best go back downstairs? Are you about to faint?”

Dorothy shook her head and smiled. It was so like Tory to ask half a dozen questions at once.

“No, nothing so dreadful as fainting. I had a sharp pain in my side and think I had best sit still a little while.”

Dorothy’s color did not grow better. Instead, she became whiter and caught hold of the railing for support, leaning her head against the banister.

The other girl hesitated. Should she continue on up the two additional flights of stairs and ask Mr. Winslow to come to their aid? Certainly Dorothy would to faint if nothing were done to revive her! Yet she really ought not to be left alone at present even for a few moments.

Tory glanced up and down the stairs, hoping some one might be approaching from one or the other direction to whom she could appeal for help.

She saw no one. She did, however, observe a door near the landing where Dorothy was seated standing ajar. From inside she could hear faint sounds of music, so some one must be at home.

84 Tory was accustomed to acting upon impulse. She did not mention to her companion what she intended doing. She walked over and knocked on this door. No one replied. At the same instant the notes of music grew louder so that the musician could scarcely have heard.

Tory pushed the door open.

She then looked inside the room, planning to explain her behavior as soon as she could attract any one’s attention.

She beheld a figure seated at a piano, with hands upon the keys and apparently oblivious of the world.
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