Christmas came and went; and in a flurry of snow and January arrived. The holidays over, matters and things seemed to settle down to the winter routine.  
Miss Winthrop had prolonged her visit in Washington until after Christmas, but she had returned to Boston now—and with her she had brought a brand-new idea for her portrait; an idea that caused her to sweep aside with superb all poses and costumes and to date, and announce herself with as “all ready now to really begin!”
 
Bertram Henshaw was , but helpless. Decidedly he wished to paint Miss Marguerite Winthrop's portrait; but to attempt to paint it when all matters were not to the lady's were worse than useless, unless he wished to hang this portrait in the gallery of failures along with Anderson's and Fullam's—and that was not the goal he had set for it. As to the money part of the affair—the great J. G. Winthrop himself had come to the artist, and in one sentence had doubled the original price and expressed himself as hopeful that Henshaw would put up with “the child's notions.” It was the old financier's next sentence, however, that put the of real determination into Bertram, for because of it, the artist saw what this portrait was going to mean to the stern old man, and how dear was the original of it to a heart that was commonly reported “on the street” to be made of stone.
 
Obviously, then, indeed, there was nothing for Bertram Henshaw to do but to begin the new portrait. And he began it—though still, it must be confessed, with inward questionings. Before a week had passed, however, every trace of had fled, and he was once again the absorbed artist who sees the vision of his desire taking palpable shape at the end of his brush.
 
“It's all right,” he said to Billy then, one evening. “I'm glad she changed. It's going to be the best, the very best thing I've ever done—I think! by the sketches.”
 
“I'm so glad!” exclaimed Billy. “I'm so glad!” The repetition was so that it sounded almost as if she were trying to convince herself as well as Bertram of something that was not true.
 
But it was true—Billy told herself very indignantly that it was; indeed it was! Yet the very fact that she had to tell herself this, caused her to know how near she was to being actually jealous of that portrait of Marguerite Winthrop. And it shamed her.
 
Very sternly these days Billy reminded herself of what Kate had said about Bertram's belonging first to his Art. She thought with , too, that it did look as if she were not the proper wife for an artist if she were going to feel like this—always. Very , then, Billy turned to her music. This was all the more easily done, for, not only did she have her usual concerts and the opera to enjoy, but she had become interested in an operetta her club was about to give; also she had taken up the new song again. Christmas being over, Mr. Arkwright had been to the house several times. He had changed some of the words and she had improved the melody. The work on the accompaniment was progressing finely now, and Billy was so glad!—when she was absorbed in her music she forgot sometimes that she was ever so unfit an artist's sweetheart as to be—jealous of a portrait.
 
It was quite early in the month that the usually expected “January thaw” came, and it was on a comparatively mild Friday at this time that a matter of business took Billy into the neighborhood of Symphony Hall at about eleven o'clock in the morning. Dismissing John and the car upon her arrival, she said that she would later walk to the home of a friend near by, where she would remain until it was time for the Symphony Concert.
 
This friend was a girl whom Billy had known at school. She was studying now at the of Music; and she had often urged Billy to come and have with her in her tiny apartment, which she shared with three other girls and a widowed aunt for . On this particular Friday it had occurred to Billy that, owing to her business appointment at eleven and the Symphony Concert at half-past two, the intervening time would give her just the opportunity she had been seeking to enable her to accept her friend's invitation. A question asked, and enthusiastically answered in the affirmative, over the telephone that morning, therefore, had speedily completed arrangements, and she had agreed to be at her friend's door by twelve o'clock, or before.
 
As it happened, business did not take quite so long as she had expected, and half-past eleven found her well on her way to Miss Henderson's home.
 
In spite of the warm sunshine and the slushy snow in the streets, there was a cold, raw wind, and Billy was beginning to feel thankful that she had not far to go when she rounded a corner and came upon a long line of humanity that curved itself back and on the wide expanse of steps before Symphony Hall and then stretched itself far up the Avenue.
 
“Why, what—” she began under her breath; then suddenly she understood. It was Friday. A world-famous pianist was to play with the Symphony Orchestra that afternoon. This must be the line of patient waiters for the twenty-five-cent balcony seats that Mr. Arkwright had told about. With sympathetic, interested eyes, then, Billy stepped one side to watch the line, for a moment.
 
Almost at once two girls brushed by her, and one was saying:
 
“What a shame!—and after all our struggles to get here! If only we hadn't lost that other train!”
 
“We're too late—you no need to hurry!” the other to a third girl who was hastening toward them. “The line is 'way beyond the Children's Hospital and around the corner now—and the ones there never get in!”
 
At the look of disappointment that crossed the third girl's face, Billy's heart ached. Her first impulse, of course, was to pull her own symphony ticket from her muff and hurry forward with a “Here, take mine!” But that would hardly do, she knew—though she would like to see Aunt Hannah's aghast face if this girl in the red sweater and white tam-o'-shanter should suddenly emerge from among the satins and furs and that afternoon and claim the adjacent orchestra chair. But it was out of the question, of course. There was only one seat, and there were three girls, besides all those others. With a sigh, then, Billy turned her eyes back to those others—those many others that made up the long line stretching its weary length up the Avenue.
 
There were more women than men, yet the men were there: jolly young men who were plainly students; older men whose refined faces and threadbare overcoats hinted at cultured minds and starved bodies; other men who showed no hollows in their cheeks nor near-holes in their garments. It seemed to Billy that women of almost all sorts were there, young, old, and ; students in tailored suits, widows in crape and veil; girls that were members of a merry party, women that were plainly forlorn and alone.
 
Some in the line restlessly; some stood quiet. One had brought a camp stool; many were seated on the steps. Beyond, where the line passed an open lot, a wooden fence afforded a convenient . One read a book, another a paper. Three were studying what was probably the score of the symphony or of the they expected to hear that afternoon.
 
A few did not appear to mind the biting wind, but most of them, by turned-up coat-collars or heads, testified to the contrary. Not far from Billy a woman a sandwich , while beyond her a group of girls were merry over four triangles of pie which they held up where all might see.
 
Many of the faces were youthful, happy, and alert with ; but others carried a wistfulness and a weariness that made Billy's heart ache. Her eyes, indeed, filled with quick tears. Later she turned to go, and it was then that she saw in the line a face that she knew—a face that with such a white of spent strength that she hurried straight toward it with a low cry.
 
“Miss Greggory!” she exclaimed, when she reached the girl. “You look actually ill. Are you ill?”
 
For a brief second only dazed questioning stared from the girl's blue-gray eyes. Billy knew when the recognition came, for she saw the painful color stain the white face red.
 
“Thank you, no. I am not ill, Miss Neilson,” said the girl, coldly.
 
“But you look so tired out!”
 
“I have been here some time; that is all.”
 
Billy threw a hurried glance down the far-reaching line that she knew had formed since the girl's two tired feet had taken their first position.
 
“But you must have come—so early! It isn't twelve o'clock yet,” she .
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