In person Miss Fraenkel was of middle size, admirably proportioned and situated in tone on the borderland between the blonde and the brunette. By which I mean that her hair was brown, her eye a warm hazel, and her skin of a satiny pallor that formed an effective background for a delightful flush that suffused her piquant features whenever her enthusiasm was roused. And her enthusiasm was continually being roused. To us cold Britons the _abandon_ with which she, in common with her countrywomen, gave herself up to the enjoyment of a picture, a book, a landscape, or for that matter of a person, was a most fascinating spectacle. American women strongly resemble champagne. At a certain age they are incomparably stimulating, but intimacy with them involves a sort of "headiness" that demands discretion; a nervous energy emanates from them that tends to relax the critical faculty. There is, moreover, a tendency to turgescence in their speech that leads the unwary into a false estimate of their intellectual range. It was some time before the conversation could be guided round to the subject which we three at any rate had at heart. Explosive cries of delight over Mac's last etching, Bill's new waist and a Chinese print I had recently acquired, were a matter of course. In deference to an unuttered request we adjourned to the studio upstairs, for Miss Fraenkel had been from the first candidly attracted by the suggestion of bohemianism in our _menage_. It was not her romantic view of an artist's life, however, that distinguished her from any other young and romantic lady, but her frankness and eloquence in acknowledging it. "It must be grand," she had told me in Lexington Avenue, "to be a _grisette_." We had admitted that it must, but had been unable to share her regret that she had not been a man "so that she could see _everything_." She was very charming as she was. Of course she knew of the painter-cousin and indeed, as soon as she could think of it, gave us the needed opening. "I saw a letter with an English postmark for you," she observed, examining the bottom of a piece of china that rested near her shoulder. "Did you get it?" "We want you to give us an opinion about it, Miss Fraenkel," said Bill, bringing out the letter and giving it to her. She accepted the packet in some uncertainty. "I!" she said, "give an opinion? I don't get it, I'm afraid." "Read it," said Bill.