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“Carpeaux and his eternal group–it’s the murderous but inevitable standard of comparison,” mused Drene, with a whimsical glance at the photograph on the wall.

“Carpeaux has nothing on this young lady,” insisted Quair flippantly; and he pivoted on his heel and sat down beside the model. Once or twice the two others, consulting before the wax group, heard the girl’s light, untroubled laughter behind their backs gaily responsive to Quair’s wit. Perhaps Quair’s inheritance had been humor, but to some it seemed perilously akin to mother-wit.

The pockets of Guilder’s loose, ill-fitting clothes bulged with linen tracings and rolls of blue-prints. He and Drene consulted over these for a while, semi-conscious of Quair’s bantering voice and the girl’s easily provoked laughter behind them. And, finally:

“All right, Guilder,” said Drene briefly. And the firm of celebrated architects prepared to evacuate the studio–Quair exhibiting symptoms of incipient skylarking, in which he was said to be at his best.

“Drop in on me at the office some time,” he suggested to the youthful model, in a gracious tone born of absolute self-satisfaction.

“For luncheon or dinner?” retorted the girl, with smiling audacity.

“You may stay to breakfast also–“

“Oh, come on,” drawled Guilder, taking his colleague’s elbow.

The sculptor yawned as Quair went out: then he closed the door then celebrated firm of architects, and wandered back rather aimlessly.

For a while he stood by the great window, watching the pigeons on neighboring roof. Presently he returned to his table, withdrew the dancing figure with its graceful, wide flung arms, set it upon the squeaky revolving table once more, and studied it, yawning at intervals.

The girl got up from the sofa behind him, went to the model-stand, and mounted it. For a few moments she was busy adjusting her feet to the chalk marks and blocks. Finally she took the pose. She always seemed inclined to be more or less vocal while Drene worked; her voice, if untrained, was untroubled. Her singing had never bothered Drene, nor, until the last few days, had he even particularly noticed her blithe trilling–as a man a field, preoccupied, is scarcely aware of the wild birds’ gay irrelevancy along the way.

He happened to notice it now, and a thought passed through his mind that the country must be very lovely in the mild spring sunshine.

As he worked, the brief visualization of young grass and the faint blue of skies, evoked, perhaps, by the girl’s careless singing, made for his dull concentration subtly pleasant environment.

“May I rest?” she asked at length.

“Certainly, if it’s necessary.”

“I’ve brought my lunch. It’s twelve,” she explained.

He glanced at her absently, rolling a morsel of wax; then, with slight irritation which ended in a shrug, he motioned her to descend.

After all, girls, like birds, were eternally eating. Except for that, and incessant preening, existence meant nothing more important to either species.

He had been busy for a few moments with the group when she said something to him, and he looked around from his abstraction. She was holding out toward him a chicken sandwich.

When his mind came back from wool gathering, he curtly declined the offer, and, as an afterthought, bestowed upon her a wholly mechanical smile, in recognition of a generosity not welcome.

“Why don’t you ever eat luncheon?” she asked.

“Why should I?” he replied, preoccupied.

“It’s bad for you not to. Besides, you are growing thin.”

“Is that your final conclusion concerning me, Cecile?” he asked, absently.

“Won’t you please take this sandwich?”

Her outstretched arm more than what she said arrested his drifting attention again.

“Why the devil do you want me to eat?” he inquired, fishing out his empty pipe and filling it.

“You smoke too much. It’s bad for you. It will do very queer things to the lining of your stomach if you smoke your luncheon instead of eating it.”

He yawned.

“Is that so?” he said.

“Certainly it’s so. Please take this sandwich.”

He stood looking at the outstretched arm, thinking of other things and the girl sprang to her feet, caught his hand, opened the fingers, placed the sandwich on the palm, then, with a short laugh as though slightly disconcerted by her own audacity, she snatched the pipe from his left hand and tossed it upon the table. When she had reseated herself on the lounge beside her pasteboard box of luncheon, she became even more uncertain concerning the result of what she had done, and began to view with rising alarm the steady gray eyes that were so silently inspecting her.