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 were 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 and 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 in 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 the 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. 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. 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. “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, but at the same time determined she would never give up.

“I am not sure, but I am going to be truthful, Tory. I am disappointed in your work; from what your father had said and written me I had expected more.”

The hand that had sheltered his face dropped to his lap and Tory was angry and touched by the artist’s expression. He seemed so very sorry for what he was saying and yet felt obliged to speak.

Making a sudden movement as if she would rescue her despised sketches, Tory felt her hand seized and herself drawn up to stand beside the artist.

Endeavoring to smile gallantly, she was meeting with little success.

“My dear child, you have misunderstood me. I don’t know how to make myself clear to young people, nor to old ones for that matter. I am far from intending to say you have no talent. I think you have talent, although I would not have you trust my judgment altogether. What I meant was that I was surprised you do not know more of the technical side of your work with so successful an artist as your father is. You have originality, but you draw badly and your coloring is—oh, well, you see I do not agree with other artists, so perhaps you are right and I am wrong. I don’t see why your father sent you to me for my opinion. There are a dozen other better men he might have asked.”

Within the last few moments Tory Drew had gone through a process of enlightenment with regard to the character of her new acquaintance. No longer was she so deeply discouraged or unable to express herself. She knew him to be intensely critical both of his own work and of other people’s, deeply sensitive and yet compelled to tell the truth as he saw it, whether it would hurt himself or others.

“Do you think I could learn to draw, learn to see color differently and to paint it?” Tory asked with the little charming half-shy, half-friendly manner to which most persons yielded.

Philip Winslow frowned.

“I would like to have you study with me a few years and afterwards go to some one I recommend, if you would work. But you won’t. You are a girl and girls don’t work, not really. But why should you? You know what my work has brought me: poverty and but few friends, no recognition. You need not work half so hard and will have better fortune with any other teacher.”

Unexpectedly and light-heartedly Tory laughed.

Her two companions, Dorothy and Lance, stared at her in surprise and in consternation. Ordinarily Tory possessed beautiful manners which the other young people in Westhaven admired and oftentimes envied. Yet it was not polite of Tory to laugh either in the face of Mr. Winslow’s criticism or his bitterness with regard to himself.

“I beg your pardon,” she added an instant later. “I was only thinking. Father told me you would say pretty much what you have said. If only you would agree to teach me some day I must not mind anything else. I don’t believe your work is so unpopular as you say it is. It is only that you are not well and you are impatient and angry with people when they don’t see things as you do. You know you really ought to be a Girl Scout.”

Tory flushed.

“I suppose you will think I am rude. I am afraid I was really. Only you seem to feel as I did when I came to Westhaven to live last winter and thought no one understood or liked me. When I became a Scout I saw things differently.”

Mr. Winslow did not appear offended by Tory’s odd speeches.

Don was right, Lance McClain thought, Tory Drew had a character of attraction no one of her Troop of Girl Scouts possessed, except of course their own sister, Dorothy. Dorothy was altogether different. Lance knew that he was sufficiently like Tory in some characteristics to understand her better than his brother or sister. They were alike; they could admire or be angry with her, they would not always understand her.

“Look here, Miss Victoria Drew, how old are you?” Mr. Winslow asked abruptly. He did not appear offended, however, merely amused. “I have been talking to you as if you were a grown woman and now you inform me I should follow your example and become a Girl Scout. Offer me advice that is a little less impossible! Besides, what or who is a Girl Scout?”

Tory shook her head. Her hair under a small blue velvet hat looked an especially bright red-gold.

“I am nearly fifteen. It would require too long a time to tell you what it means to be a Girl Scout. Perhaps there were no Boy Scouts when you were young enough to join their organization. If only you would come to Westhaven I should like you to meet our Patrol of the Eagle’s Wing Troop. Besides, it would do you good. Won’t you come? The country is beautiful with its white covering of snow. My aunt, Miss Victoria Fenton, is a wonderful housekeeper and you and Uncle Richard would be sure to like each other. Besides, there is our Troop Captain, Sheila Mason. I wish some day you might know her and paint her portrait. She is lovely, but altogether unlike the portraits you have done.”

Tory glanced not very admiringly at the heads of men and women adorning the artist’s gray walls. His models had assuredly not been chosen for their beauty.

This time Mr. Winslow returned Tory’s laughter with emphasis.

She had divined that he was lonely and disillusioned and that, as in most cases, the fault was as much his own as his world’s.

“Fifteen, and I have been talking to you as if you were a woman! I suppose I had forgotten what your father wrote. In any case I might have known by looking at you. I don’t often pay visits, but if your aunt and uncle would like to have me at any time, perhaps I’ll come and look over other drawings you have done and tell you how poor they are. You are too young for anything but your three ‘R’s’ at present. But we might have a few lessons for the sake of the good time we would have and because your father has been kinder to me than he would be willing to let other people know.”

At a signal from Tory, Dorothy and Lance had arisen. The three of them were preparing to leave, aware of having remained longer than they should. Outside, the winter twilight had almost completely closed in.

Lighting a pair of candles, Mr. Winslow turned to Dorothy and Lance, fearing that he had not shown sufficient attention to his other visitors in his interest in his old friend’s daughter.

He admired Dorothy McClain’s appearance, her tall, upright figure, with the broad shoulders and slender hips, the clear, fresh skin and straightforward blue eyes. An instant he considered that so a Greek girl might have appeared in the days of the great Greek sculptors. Then inwardly he denied his own thought. Dorothy McClain was a typical American girl. Turning toward Lance, he put out his hand for a second time.

“I did not recognize you at first. I believe we have seen each other before, here in this very house. Do you live here?”

Lance shook his head.

“No, I come here now and then. I have a friend in one of the other studios who allows me the use of his piano.”

“Do you mean the rich fellow named Moore, who won’t have anything to do with the rest of us in this building?”

Lance stiffened.

“I know nothing of Mr. Moore’s private affairs.”

A little later, when they had said farewell and gone, Dorothy and Tory both appreciated that they had learned the name of Lance’s friend which he had declined to tell them without permission. It was of no importance. Moore was not an uncommon name. As a matter of fact, it was possibly bestowed upon Kara because it was so ordinary a name, when she had been deserted as a baby in the evergreen cabin.