Yet, when I first saw the young lady, she was not in blue, if you forget for a moment her forget-me-not eyes. She was in deepest black, and, I have reason to believe, the most expensive and fashionable black to be had in New York. Gigi Arcangelo, my seldom-sinning super-assistant, broke all the rules of the studio when he let her in, that bright May afternoon. Gigi knew perfectly well that after a vexatious sitting from Senator Bullwinkle (who, in order to keep awake while posing, always had his speeches of a decade ago read aloud to him by my wife) I would be in no mood for trifling with mere beauty. Gigi knew that I needed three hours of uninterrupted work on my head of Christ, before I could well show it to an enlightened Bishop; he knew that I was behind with my Iowa figures; he knew that my bust of General Daly ought to have been finished, boxed, and shipped a month before; he knew that my big clay relief of the Spanker-Sampson children had developed a crack across the nose of the middle boy, making him look more cross-eyed than he really was, so that his likeness was wholly unfit for the inspection of a fond and fabulously rich Middle-Western aunt, due to arrive on the Wednesday. In short, Gigi knew that I was counting on this priceless afternoon, of all the afternoons of my life, to justify, yes, to glorify, my career as an artist. And to think that at such a time as this, he could show in that girl, simply because, as he afterward explained, to do otherwise would have been, for him, _impossibile_, she was _si bella, bella_! Gigi shared my weakness, you observe; he too was pledged to beauty. At arm’s length, he pushed up her card to me as I stood on my high ladder. The name was a long one, beginning with _C_ and ending in _en_—Chittenden, of course. I waved away the name and would have had Gigi do likewise by the owner. Too late! She was already inside the door. Grudgingly enough, I climbed down from my head of Christ, well resolved to make short shrift of the girl and all her works. But even before I reached the ground, I was somewhat disarmed, because, clad wholly in black as she was, with the heavenly young radiance of her eyes merging softly into the faint rosy radiance of her uplifted face and the shadowed golden radiance of her hair, while the three radiances together were enclosed within the black-rimmed, transparent circle of her veiled hat, she was beyond any mortal doubt an engaging sight. I caught myself saying, under my breath, “Oh, happy hat!” This struck me at the time as an asinine remark, even when privately made, and I ascribed it to the spring season. Looking back, I see that the observation was quite correct. In reality, the girl was just a complex of radiances, bounded by black; sweet and twenty, and in mourning.