Jane's emotions, as she turned her attention to Isabelle, were compounded of amusement and sympathy for Jerry. She sensed how he, of all men, would hate being made ridiculous. She was destined to hear the whole story before she went to sleep, for Isabelle's pent passion had reached a climax where a confidante was a necessity.

She described the yachting party most cleverly. She enlarged on Mrs. Brendon's attempts to isolate Althea and Jerry, with her own introduction into the picture. She described her growing love for the hero, her determination to join him when he came north. She even admitted that she had wired the head mistress of the school not to meet them, because she thought that Jerry would then have to marry her to "protect her good name."

Jane struggled not to laugh; it was so poignant to the girl, and so absurd to her. She tried to soothe her, to change the subject, but in vain.

"Do you think he will marry me?" she demanded.

"I doubt it."

"Don't you think he loves me?"

"I'm afraid you're too young for this kind of thing."

"I'm not young. I'm nearly seventeen, and lots of girls love and marry before that."

"Lots of other women are in love with Mr. Paxton, too," said Jane.

"You just say that to scare me!" cried Isabelle, and followed it up with much weeping.

Poor Jane endured a bad night, but as is the way with afflictions, it was finally over. Jerry arrived at nine, full of thanks to her, and carried the enfant terrible off to her school.

Jane hurried home, for this was to be a momentous day to her. Martin Christiansen had written that he was coming to see her at three o'clock in the afternoon, to talk over her work.

"Let me come to you in your own quarters, where you write and live, will you, my friend?" he had written her.

She had sent for him to come, and this was the day. She was not ashamed of the little room in the tenement house, where she had spent so many hours. She looked about it as she let herself in, trying to see it with his eyes—eyes used to beauty and comfort.

It was a square room, on the corner with two windows, west and south, hung with white curtains. It was small, but not cramped. The walls were calcimined white. The bed and dresser were white, as were the few chairs. A table, by one window, had on it a student lamp and neat piles of manuscript, while a dozen books were supported by book ends, against the wall. The rug was inexpensive, but dull in colour. It was scrupulously clean, and its bareness suggested deliberate asceticism rather than poverty.

"We aren't ashamed of it, Milly," she said to the cat. "It certainly is not beautiful, but it's clean, and sort of self-respecting, and those are the virtues of our class. He will understand that. I do hope you will like him, Milly," she added.

She hurried with her luncheon, gave Milly a bath, made a careful toilet herself. The same dark dress to be sure, but little fine collars and cuffs were added, to take away its austerity. She let her hair coil itself loosely instead of screwing it back as she usually did. She made these preparations, not at the dictation of vanity, for she was singularly free from it, but from an instinct to make herself fit for what she felt to be a crisis in her life. Whether Martin Christiansen said good or bad really did not matter so much as the fact that she had come to this point of testing—this day of judgment.

While she waited for his coming she let her mind return to Jerry and his latest difficulty. She laughed aloud at the memory of the girl's passionate absurdity. She thought back to her own first romance, a mad infatuation for the little town beau, to whom she never spoke. Yet how he had filled her dreams, how she had planned her marriage to him, under romantic circumstances, just as Isabelle had planned hers with Jerry. Artist-like, she appraised this self-revelation of youth, in its pitiful, lovable folly, and made it her own. As for poor Jerry, he was evidently doomed to stumble from one love affair to another, until death withered his charms. Too much love; too little love; so life goes grinding on, like an endless film of the sated and the hungry.

Milly jumped into her lap, purring.

"Milly, you're one of the Jerrys; you get nothing but affection. Is it because you demand it, or just because you are beautiful and people give it to you?"

She heard voices on the stairs, and opened the door wide, the big cat in her arms. Billy Biggs came first.

"Gen'l'mum to see yu, Miss Judd," he announced.

"Thank you, Billy. Welcome," she added simply to her guest. He took her hand in his cordial clasp, and looked his pleasure. He gave Billy a small tribute.

"You're a most excellent guide, my son," he remarked.

"I seen right away he didn't know this neighbourhood, Miss Judd, so I sez to him: 'What ye lookin' fer?'"

"Thank you much, Billy," she smiled, closing the door on his monologue.

"Is this your family?" he asked, laying his hand on Milly's head.

"Yes. Her name is Militant, but we call her Milly, as a sort of tactful evasion. Protects her with the neighbours, who are, on the whole, conservatives."

He smiled, laid his coat aside, and turned to look at her closely. She met his glance, flushing slightly.

"I have to get used to you at home."

He looked about him frankly.

"Yes, this is you—virginal, cloistered. Where did you get that Salome?" he inquired.

"I don't know. I understand Salome."

She sat by the window, where the afternoon sun came in, the big cat asleep in her lap. He drew a chair near her.

"I'm enormously curious about you. Where did you come from? Who were your people? How did you get here?"

"It isn't a bit interesting. I was born in a little town named Warburton, in New Jersey. My father was John Judd. He had a grocery store and was a leading citizen. My mother was an actress."

"Ah!" said Christiansen.

"The company she was with went broke in our town, and she stayed on as cashier in Judd's store. He married her and I was the only child. She died when I was twenty; my father followed when I was twenty-two. I sold the grocery, paid the debts, and came to New York to be an author."

She paused and turned her slow, rare smile on him. She had the ability to sit perfectly still, her hands quiet in her lap. Christiansen marked the trait; valued it.

"What made you want to write?"

"I had always been a reader. I read everything in the Warburton Public Library, I think. When I was in High School I wrote some stories which the local editor published, under an assumed name. My mother thought I had great talent, and I was tempted to agree with her," she smiled.

"How long did your funds last, in New York?"

"Not long. I did not have much in the first place. I realized before the money was gone that I must take any job I could find. I was not prepared to do anything."

"Same old story. How did you get work in the studios?"

"Answered Mr. Paxton's advertisement. I've been there ever since. I didn't care what I did, just so I made a living. My real life is here, with my true work."

"Just what do you do in the studios?"

"Anything—everything. Mend their clothes, clean palettes, sweep the studios, make curtains, look after them when they're sick, cook for them when they're busy."

"No wonder you know them so well."

It was his first reference to her work. She waited breathlessly, but he returned to her past again.

"Were you never tempted to take up your mother's profession?"

"No. You see, I had always been told how hard that life was, and I suppose I rather shared my father's belief that it wasn't respectable. Warburton found my mother its most interesting citizen, while it disapproved of her entirely. She was just a simple, frail woman, but to Warburton she was a brand plucked from the burning, and her past was never to be forgotten."

"Was your father in love with her, or was it the romance of her profession which attracted him?"

"Father was very religious. I think he married her to save her soul. He was as kind to her as he knew how to be, but he never understood her."

"And you?"

"I loved her and took care of her. She was my child from the time I was a baby. I acted as interpreter to my father, whom I understood, too, in a way. He was a dour, silent man, but just."

"I get the picture of both of them," he nodded.

"Can I write?" she demanded bluntly.

"How long have you been working at that desk?"

"Five years."

She drew a big packing box from under the bed. It was full of manuscripts. He looked at it with deep interest.

"You've told nobody, offered nothing for sale in those years?"

"Not since my first editor, who gave me such good advice."

"It is incredible."

"Is the time wasted?" she asked.

"No. Work is never wasted, and of course you are destined to write."

"Am I?" she cried. The quality in her voice, of rapture and strain, made him look at her.

"My child, how you care!" he said, laying his hand on hers.

She nodded, with wet eyes.

"I have been profoundly interested in the things you gave me to read. I want more, much more. There are certain undoubted qualities—an astonishing vocabulary, a fine sense of words. You are a gourmet for choice words, rich words, words fat with meaning. You've a pretty good sense of form. I can fairly analyze your literary diet. 'Ha, now she's devouring MoliÈre,' I would say to myself, or, 'she's overeating the Russians.'"

Jane laughed happily.

"As a specialist, I must say that you are overfed and undernourished. You read too much and live too little. You look out on life from this white cell. Do you see what I mean?"

"Yes, yes; but what can I do?"

"We must do something. The true artist speaks for the age in which he lives. There is no room for the ascetic point of view in our world to-day—this is a world of the senses. Like it or not, it's true. We measure all pleasure, all experience, by their Æsthetic or emotional value. We go back to the very sources of art to find a fiercer reaction. We have Piccabia, Matisse crudity gone stark; we have dissonance in harmony—DeBussey and Strauss; the Russians with their barbaric dances. We have the Irish renaissance in drama, going back to the peasant for primitive emotions. We have the bloodiest war in all times; we are primitive savages in our greed for lust and power, just as we are supermen in devising ways of exquisite, torturing death for our enemies. We are the age of the senses, my friend; we brook no denial of the flesh and its appetites."

"I understand what you mean; I know it to be true; but how can I have a part in life, when perforce, I am just an onlooker?" she asked earnestly.

"We will find a way. We must open the door of the nunnery, and lead Sister Jane into the world of deeds, of fight and lose, heartache and some rare joys. Do you want to come, Sister Jane?"

She turned her head and looked into space beyond her window before she answered.

"I shall miss the sanctuary, the quiet, and my holy saints," she said, her hand sweeping the books, "but I want to come out; for a long time, Mr. Christiansen, I've wanted so to come out."

"Good. We will begin with your worldly education to-night, dear saint. We'll go to Polly's for dinner, and thence to a meeting at Cooper Union, where I am to speak. Will you come?"

"Oh, yes," she cried excitedly. "It is so wonderful to have a friend and go off for dinner and talk. You're the first friend I've ever had," she added shyly.

"That's a responsibility," he answered, "but I like it. I must set you a high standard."

"You have. I wish I could give you something to make you happy, in exchange."

"I am a gourmet of people, as you are of words, Jane Judd. You give me a rare treat, a new flavour. Come, get your hat, child, and let's be about your living!"