It was called the studio, and there certainly were canvases and easels and other artists' paraphernalia there, but it was less used for painting than as a room for sitting and smoking and tea and discussion. It was a comfortable apartment. Rugs made islands on the thick cork floor-covering, and among the rugs were saddlebag chairs, a long adjustable chair, and a wide couch covered with faded tapestry. The room was an annex of corrugated iron lined with matchboarding, but electric-light fittings depended from the iron ties overhead, and in place of an ordinary hearth was a sort of stage one, with an imitation log of asbestos, which, when you put a match to it, broke into a licking of blue and yellow gas-jets. The north window occupied the whole of the garden end, and, facing it, was the large cartoon for Amory's unfinished allegorical picture, "_The Triumph of Humane Government_." High up and just within the door was the bell that answered to the button outside. Amory was putting down the casts on a Benares tray when the ringing of this bell startled her. But as it rang in the kitchen also, she did not move to answer it. She stood listening, the fingers of one hand to her lips, those of the other still resting on the plaster shoulder. Then she heard a voice, and a moment later there came a tap at the door. It was Mr. Strong. He advanced, and did a thing he had not done before--lifted the hand she extended to his lips and then let it drop again. But Amory was not surprised. It was merely a new and natural expression of the homage he had never concealed, and even had Amory been vain enough to suppose that it meant anything more, the briskness of the "Good afternoon" that followed it would have disabused her. "Glad I found you," Mr. Strong said. "I wanted to see you. Cosimo in?" Her husband was always Cosimo to him, but in speaking to herself he used no name at all. It was as if he hesitated to call her Amory, and refused to call her Mrs. Pratt. Even "Miss Towers" he had only used once, and that was some time ago. Amory's fingers left the cast, and Mr. Strong walked towards the asbestos log.--"May I?" he said, drawing forth a packet of Virginia cigarettes; and afterwards he put the match with which he lighted one of the cigarettes to the log. Amory drew up a small square footstool, and put her elbows on her knees and her interwoven fingers beneath her chin. Mr. Strong examined the end of his cigarette, and thrust his chin down into his red tie and his hands deep into his trousers pockets. Then he seemed to plunge into thought. Suddenly he shot a glance at Amory, and said abruptly, "I suppose you've talked over the Indian policy with Cosimo?"