"Does it seem like a play to you, too?" he asked; "everyone playing a part and making you wonder how it's coming out?" "Well"--she debated--"I used to have that, when I was at school and came here for holiday times. I was always expecting great things to happen then. But they never did. You'll be disappointed if you expect them. Everybody rides down Broadway in the morning and back again at night, and they make such a fuss about it that you think something worth while is coming off, but it doesn't. _I_ know." She achieved this with an air of mellowed cynicism that almost won his respect. "But things _must_ happen where there's so much life," he insisted. "You're very young, aren't you?" she retorted. "Quite a boy, I should think. Sister said so. You'll see, though. It isn't one bit more a happening life than ours up at Kensington. Yours must have been the happening life, there in the West. Tell me about Clarence. Is he a real cowboy yet? He says he's a real one, but I couldn't believe it. Those I saw in the Wild West show looked as if they'd had to study it a long time. Can Clarence lasso a wild cow yet?" She leaned toward him with friendly curiosity. They were amazed half an hour later when they looked up to find Mrs. Laithe standing by them, the only other occupant of the room. "You must come oftener," urged Mrs. Laithe. Her sister gave him her hand with a grip that made him wonder at its force. He pushed through the evening crowd of Broadway, pleasantly reviewing his talk with the girl. At Forty-second Street it occurred to him that this was the first time he had walked the street unconscious of its throng. He had been self-occupied, like most of its members. But the girl, he reflected, would go away. The friend, the near one, to take and give, man or woman, was still to be found. CHAPTER XIV THE TRICK OF COLOR The men of the Rookery toiled, in the season of toil, with that blithe singleness of purpose they brought to their play. Ewing learned this the following morning when, after an hour in his own place, correcting some of those hasty first arrangements, he began an idling tour of the other studios. These occupied the two upper floors of the building, those beneath flaunting signs of trade on the ground-glass doors one passed in the long climb from the street. From Baldwin's studio--Baldwin was sketching in from the model a kneeling Filipino prisoner with head thrown back and hands bound behind him--Ewing descended to Chalmers's place to find its owner finishing, with many swift pen strokes, the filmy gown of a debutante who underwent with downcast eyes the appraisal of an elderly beau. This absorbed and serious Chalmers was so unlike the frivolous night bird who reviled his art editor that Ewing forbore to distract him. Griggs, in the studio back of Chalmers, was soberly work-bent over the wash-drawing of a sword fight, an illustration for what he confided to Ewing was the latest "high boots and hardware novel."