THE following hour was one of the most delightful the two girls and Lance had ever spent.

Overjoyed at meeting so unexpectedly, Lance’s reluctance forgotten in the joy of being with his sister and friend, the three of them also came in contact with a new and charming personality and in the midst of a new and beautiful environment.

To Tory Drew an artist’s studio was not a new experience. She had lived with her father in several of their own. She had visited with him the studios of many fellow-artists. But to Dorothy and to Lance a studio outside Westhaven was a fresh interest. Although she could say no word aloud, undoubtedly Tory would have agreed that if other studios had been handsomer, never was one more original or charming.

The room was in gray, a cold background with the northern window save for the warmth of the other coloring.

At this hour the winter daylight was closing in and curtains were partly drawn; they were91 a curious shade, half rose, half red, and strangely luminous.

On the gray walls were the artist’s own pictures.

They were unlike modern work, and perhaps for this reason less popular. In landscapes and in portraiture the tones were richer and darker.

Expecting two of his three guests, Mr. Winslow had prepared for tea.

An enormous lounge, large enough for sleeping and with a high back, was drawn up in front of a meager fire. Wood was expensive in New York City and Philip Winslow an unsuccessful artist.

The small tea table held an array of china with scarcely two pieces alike, yet each one rarely lovely and gathered with care and taste in the years when their owner had studied in France and Italy. There he had won the Prix de Rome. Not in those days did he dream of living on the top floor of a dilapidated house, in a cheap quarter of the greatest of American cities.

The teakettle was boiling. One could hear the hissing behind the oriental curtains that shut off a single corner of the room.

After greeting their new acquaintance and92 explaining the reason why they were later than they had planned, Lance, Dorothy and Tory seated themselves upon the great couch. There they sat, silently watching their host until he had vanished into his improvised kitchenette.

They were pursuing almost the same trains of thought.

A man at once younger and older than the girls expected to find him, Philip Winslow had a mass of pale-brown hair, brushed carelessly off a high forehead, eyes darkly brown, with a melancholy expression even when his lips smiled. He was unusually tall, and this may partly have accounted for his appearance of extreme thinness, although neither girl considered this true, for he looked as if he had not long before suffered from a serious illness.

During the hour that followed the three guests found themselves talking to their host with entire freedom as if they had been old friends. Yet Philip Winslow was a shy person, ordinarily talking but little himself. Disappointment at the failure of his work and ill health had altered his original gaiety of spirit.

Indeed, Tory Drew had often heard her father speak of him as one of the leaders in93 their old-time artist frolics in the Latin Quarter.

Only once was Tory overawed by her new acquaintance. This was when she shyly offered him her collection of sketches and sat waiting his criticism.

She was on the great sofa facing the now dying fire, while he sat in a small chair opposite, beneath the fading daylight.

For five, ten minutes no one spoke.

The sketches were several bits of outdoor work and two paintings of the little girl, Lucy Martin, who was now Lucy Hammond. Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy Hammond had formally adopted the child who had lived in the Gray House on the Hill, the orphan asylum in the village of Westhaven.

Lucy was oddly picturesque and always Tory had longed to make a portrait of the younger girl since their original meeting. She appreciated, however, that she was too young and untrained for real portraiture. Her efforts were only simple drawings, with a good deal of boldness of color and design. Personally, Tory considered the sketches of Lucy the best things she had ever done and had chosen them for this reason for exhibition.

Certainly Mr. Winslow passed over the94 others more rapidly, keeping these in his hands and turning his glance from one to the other. Apparently he was hardly aware now of his guests, although a short time before he had been so courteous and attentive.

During the interval Tory wished some one would speak of something. Under the circumstances she was not in the position to chatter idly, as if she were not intensely anxious for Mr. Winslow’s opinion of her work. But Dorothy or Lance might have talked to each other in low voices without rudeness or interference.

Instead, they pressed close beside each other, Lance’s slender hand clutching a fold of his sister’s dress, as if he would thus be sure of her presence. Dorothy, without any pretence of hiding her emotion, rarely raised her eyes from her brother’s face.

In the midst of her own nervousness Tory felt a regret that was half envy. Who would not desire affection like Dorothy’s and her twin brothers’? Tory so often was separated from the people she cared for most. The devoted intimacy with her artist father had been interrupted by his second marriage and his wish that she be brought up among her mother’s people and in her own country.95 Then the friendship between Katherine Moore and herself! Not altered by Kara’s illness—a thousand times no; but assuredly affecting the hours they could spend together and their happiness in each other’s society.

Would Mr. Winslow never speak? Was her work so poor that he dreaded telling her the truth for the sake of his old affection for her father, Tory reflected.

Biting her lips, she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. If her aunt, Miss Victoria Fenton, had been able to see her at this instant, she would have recognized one of the Fenton characteristics she vainly had looked for in her niece—dignity in meeting defeat.

Naturally pale, Tory was possessed of less color than usual. Her lips, therefore, appeared redder and her wide eyes darker and more wistful. They contradicted the bravery of her attitude.

Sympathetically and encouragingly, Lance tried to sustain her through the last of the ordeal. For the moment forgetting his sister, he reached out to the girl on the other side of him.

He wanted to be able to explain to Tory, to make her realize that she would succeed.96 She was made for success, even if the present criticism should be unfavorable. She was young and would have the opportunity given her to go on struggling for years and years. Painting was not like music; one did not require to succeed while one was young, one could, if necessary, work many years. For himself Lance was more fearful.

But Tory was not interested in what he might say or think at the present time.

Mr. Winslow was at last speaking, if only to ask a question.

“How long and with whom have you studied?” he inquired, holding up one of the small sketches so that it formed a shield for his face.

“Why, I have never really studied at all,” Tory answered. “I mean I have had no regular lessons. I, of course, have had the advantage of hearing a good many clever people talk about art and I have watched my father work and have worked beside him for as long as I can remember. Until this winter father has believed it wiser for me not to study art. He wanted me to learn more of other things first. He was afraid I would lose interest in school and not be properly domestic.”

Again Mr. Winslow was silent.

97 “Is my work so poor? Do you think I had best give up altogether the hope of becoming an artist?” Tory demanded, desperate at last, bu............