Fairfax presented the Count to Dearborn, who beamed on him, amused, and Potowski glanced at the cold, cheerless Bohemia. It was meagre. It was cold. Privation was apparent. The place was not without a charm, and it had distinction. There were the evidences of intense work, of devotion to the ideal. There were the evidences of good taste and good breeding. The few bits of furniture were old and had been bought for a song, but selected with judgment. Fairfax's statuette waited on its pedestal to be carried away--in the winter light, softened and subdued by mist, Mrs. Fairfax read in her chair. Dearborn's table, strewn with his papers and books, told of hours spent at a beloved labour. There was nothing material to attract--no studio properties or decorations to speak of. Two long divans were placed against a wall of agreeable colour. There was nothing but the spirit of art and work, and the spirit of youth as well, but Potowski was delighted. He pointed to the statuette. "This," he said, "is the lovely lady with whom you have been shut up all these days. It is charming, Monsieur." "It is a study of my mother as I remember her." "I salute it," said Potowski, making a little inclination. "I salute _you_. It is beautiful." He put his hand on Fairfax's arm. "You do my wife. You do the Contessa," said Potowski, "the same. I adore it. It looks my wife. It might be her, Monsieur. But all beauty is alike, is not it? One lovely woman is all women. Are you not of my opinion?" He swam toward Dearborn who was fascinated by Potowski's overcoat lined with fur, and with the huge fur collar, with his patent shoes with their white tops, with his bright waistcoat, his single eyeglass, his shining silk hat and, above all, by the gay foreign face, its waxed moustache and its sparkling dark eyes. Dearborn wrapped his dressing-gown modestly around him to conceal his shirtless, collarless condition. Running his hands through dishevelled red hair, he responded-- "No, I don't agree with you. I guess your feminine psychology is at fault there, Count." "_Rreally_ not," murmured the Count, looking at him eagerly. "Mr. Dearborn is a playwright," said Antony. "He is a great student of character." Potowski waved his hand in its light glove. "You write plays, Monsieur? You shall write me a libretto. I have been looking for ever for some one to write the words for a _hopera_ I am making." Dearborn nodded. "Far from being all alike, I don't think that there have been two women alike since Eve." "_Rreally!_" Potowski looked at the red-headed man as if he wondered whether he had met and known all women. "You find it so, Monsieur? Now I have been married three times. Every one of them were lovely women. I find them all the same." "You must have a very adaptable, assimilating and modifying nature," said Dearborn, smiling. "Modifying? What is that?" asked the Pole sweetly.