“Do take it over to your room to explain it,” Paul said petulantly. “You distract me.” “Come,” said the girl, and they entered the room on the other side of the hall. But in a moment Paul had followed them anxiously. “I must tell you that the colours here are not right,” he said, hovering over the model, which the girl had set down on her table. “No blues—no blues at all! blues go in the next scene. Nothing but red and gold and black. And this arch will be different—more sombre. The throne higher—dwarfing the human figures. Very high—twenty inches, an inch to the foot, twenty feet high!” “But Paul,” said the girl, “you know our proscenium-arch is only twelve feet high!” “I can’t help that, my dear young woman,” the young man replied with hauteur. “I know well enough that you’ll ruin my beautiful scene. But in my mind—_Oh, pewter platter!_” His voice, uttering this preposterous exclamation, had become shrill, and he dashed to the door. “My glue-pot!” he cried, and disappeared. The girl sat down and began to laugh. “Isn’t he funny?” she said. “Funny?” Felix echoed dubiously. “But he does make nice stage-pictures anyway,” she said. Felix looked at the model. “But are these airs natural to him, or is he just putting them on to impress people? Where is he from?” “Guess!” Felix thought he saw a light. “London?” The girl laughed again. “Arkansas,” she said. “What!” “Yes, just as he is now, from Arkansas—glasses, accent, Yellow Book and everything. I’ve a kind of notion why it is, if you’d like to hear it.” “I would.” “Then make yourself comfortable.” She motioned toward the couch, which with its pillows was the only suggestion of ease in her rather bare and workmanlike room; a writing-table, a typewriter on its stand, and a long shelf of books, gave it an air quite different from the room across the hall. She drew over a chair for herself in front of the couch. “Don’t blame him,” she said. “We’re all a little like that—I mean, queer. I’m sure I seem quite as queer as that to my family down in Springfield. If you live in Arkansas, and want to make lovely stage-pictures, you _are_ a freak; or you become one trying to keep from being dull like everybody else. It’s inevitable.” “You frighten me,” Felix said soberly. “Am I a freak? I suppose I am—but somehow I don’t like the idea.” “Do you want to make a million dollars?” “No, not at all.” “Then of course you’re a freak.” She laughed cheerfully. “And what does Chicago think of—of us?” he asked. “Oh, that’s all right. Chicago is beginning to realize that it needs us. Chicago wants to be a metropolis. And all the stockyards in the world won’t make a metropolis. Enough of us, given a free-hand—can. And Chicago knows it. Just now we are at a premium here. We can be as crazy as we like!” “I wonder?”