"So? Elemental, I should say, rather than decadent." "What's the difference? They're both naughty." He laughed and indicated Jane. "May I be presented to Salome?" "Miss Judd, this is Mr. Martin Christiansen," she said. "You know your Oscar Wilde, Miss Judd," he said. "Miss Judd substituted at the last moment," Mrs. Brendon said. "Wasn't it wonderful of her?" "It was because I knew the Wilde Salome that I was able to do it at all." "You are an actress?" "Oh, no. I'm--I'm not anything." "Excuse me; yours was the only distinguished impersonation to-night. You made these beautiful dolls worth enduring," he said in a low tone. "Oh!" breathed Jane, looking at him directly, to be sure he wasn't laughing at her, then hastily gazing toward Mrs. Brendon, to make sure she had not heard him. But that great lady had swept on. "Who is Jerry Paxton?" "Every one asks that. Mrs. Brandon says,--" Here she gave so perfect an imitation of Mrs. Brendon's words and manner that Christiansen laughed heartily. "So, he is a painter. I seem to remember him faintly. Is he a good painter?" "I'm not a critic." "You like him--the man, I mean?" "Why--I don't know. I'm sorry for him, rather." "He doesn't look an object to inspire pity, Miss Salome. He seems to be a brilliant sort of person." "Yes, I know, but he's so sort of unprotected, like a little boy." "So that's why you're sorry for him? That's akin to saying that you're sorry for all men." "I am, rather, and all women." He looked at her keenly, and she gave him her eyes directly. "You don't look a misogynist." "I am tremendously interested in life, but I feel always a little sorry for all of us who are trying to live it. Don't you?" "Yes, but I'm old enough to be sorry for us, and you are not." "I'm rather old," she said; then, as he laughed, she joined him. She was nearer happy than she had ever been. She was having a real conversation with a man she liked. "Where do you live?" he asked. "In a queer sort of place, a tenement house down on----You ought to know who I am. I don't belong here at all," she added. "So much the better." "I came at the last minute, as Mrs. Brendon said, because Mr. Paxton couldn't get any one else. I'm just a sort of general housekeeper in the studios around the Square. I take care of artists." "Studio mother," he smiled. "What else do you do?" "I read a great deal, and I write." "Now we come to the gist of the matter. What do you write?" "I don't know what made me say that. I never told that secret to any one before." "Thank you. But writing isn't a crime. If it is, half of New York is in the criminal class." "Please don't tell any one I said such a silly thing. What I do is just nothing." "It's a secret. I promise. Where do you publish?" "I don't publish." "No? You're an author after my own heart. I'm a critic, you see." "Yes, I know." "Do you? You read me?" "Yes, always." "When may I come and see you?"