"But the artist is not," returned Miss Freighley, "and one can be an artist without having any art. I am. They think at home I am learning to paint pictures to go on the parlor wall in place of the portraits that were burned in the war. But I am not. I am here because I love New York, and--" "Claude Nevins," concluded Miss Oliver. Mariana looked up with interest. "How nice!" she said. "He told me you were awfully pretty." Miss Freighley blushed and laughed. "Nonsense!" she rejoined; "but Gerty is so faithful to her young fellow down South that it has gone to her brain." "I am faithful because I have no opportunity for faithlessness," sang Gerty to an accompaniment she was picking upon the guitar. "I have been in love one--two--six times since I came to New York. Once it was with an editor, who accepted my first story. He was short and thick and gray-haired, but I loved him. Once it was with that dark, ill-fed man who rooms next to Mariana. He almost knocked me down upon the stairway and forgot to apologize. I have forgotten the honorable others, as the Japanese say, but I know it is six times, because whenever it happened I made a little cross-mark on my desk, and there are six of them." "It must have been Mr. Ardly," said Mariana. "I never look at him without thinking what an adorable lover he would make." "He has such nice hands," said Miss Oliver. "I do like a man with nice hands." "And he is clean-shaven," added Miss Freighley. "I detest a man with a beard." Miss Hill crossed her thin ankles upon the hearth. "Love should be taken seriously," she said, with a wistful look in her dark eyes. Miss Freighley's pretty, inconsequent laugh broke in. "That is one of Juliet's platitudes," she said. "But, my dear, it shouldn't be taken seriously. Indeed, it shouldn't be taken at all--except in cases of extreme _ennui_, and then in broken doses. The women who take men seriously--and taking love means taking men, of course--sit down at home and grow shapeless and have babies galore. To grow shapeless is the fate of the woman who takes sentiment seriously. It is a more convincing argument against it than all the statistics of the divorce court--" "For the Lord's sake, Carrie, beware of woman's rights," protested Miss Oliver. "That is exactly what Mrs. Simpson said in her lecture on 'Our Tyrant, Man.' Why, those dear old aunts of yours in Alabama have inserted an additional clause in their Litany: 'From intemperance, evil desires, and woman's suffrage, good Lord deliver us!' They are grounded in the belief that the new woman is an _edition de luxe_ of the devil." Mariana rose and shook out her skirts. "I must go," she said, "and you haven't done a bit of work." "So we haven't," replied Miss Hill, picking up her needle. "But take some caramels--do." Mariana took a caramel and went out into the hall. Algarcife's door was open, and he was standing upon the threshold talking to Claude Nevins.