The studio was dark, only the large window showed a dim, gray square. She lit the lamp, and then, suddenly, in the recklessness of her desperation, the fire. There were eight pieces of wood and six briquettes in the box. She would burn them all. She would burn the bed and the chairs, but she would be warm to-night. To-morrow was twelve hours off. The light showed the emptiness of the chill, barn-like room. The walls alone were furnished, decorated with a series of life-class studies, some made twenty years before, when she had been the star of one of the Julians. Now these spirited delineations of nakedness, unlovely and unabashed, offered silent testimony to the brilliant promise of Celia Reardon’s youth. To-night she only thought of the fire and cowered over it--a little, pale shadow of a woman, near upon middle age. For hours she sat watching the flames dart up through the holes in the briquettes. The warmth consoled her. She grew dreamy and retrospective. Her thoughts went slipping back from point to point, in the glamourous past, when she had been hung in the Salon, and sold her pictures, and was an artist people spoke of who would some day “arrive.” From those radiant days of youth and hope, things had been gradually declining to this--one by one stand-bys failing and her old patrons leaving, rich Americans who ordered copies growing scarcer and scarcer. Finally no money to hire models, bad food, and, in consequence, declining health, poor work that failed to find a market; pride coming to her aid and withdrawing her from the help of friends; furtive visits to the Mont de Piete, and more dreaded ones to the dealers on the Rue Bonaparte; and to-night the end of all things. It was late when she slept. Waking in the gray dawn she found herself lying cramped and cold in front of the white ashes of the fire, and crept shivering to bed. There she slept on till after midday. She felt weak and stupid when she rose, and her dressing took a long time. She began to realize that her state was nearly as bad physically as it was financially. It was better to walk about the streets till the hour for tea than to freeze in the studio. She put on her hat and jacket, relics of better days to which she desperately clung, and went forth. In the night the thermometer had fallen and the rain had turned to snow. She buried her chin in her collar and tried to walk briskly. She thought she would go to the Louvre, which was warm, and sit there till four, when she could come back to the Girls’ Club. Both walks were long, but the hour’s rest at the Louvre would strengthen her, and there was still the faint possibility of meeting some one she knew who would order a copy.