"My dear, I will buy it for you. Mrs. Maybough became the owner of the picture, yesterday, but I will offer her an advance on the price she paid." Cornelia now thought she was really angry with him for the first time since their marriage. She would not speak at once, but when she did speak, it was to say, "No, let her keep it. I know Charmian made her buy it and I wouldn't like to take it from her. She has so much imagination that maybe she can see some meaning in it and it will always be such a pleasure to her to explain it even if she can't." Charmian made the Ludlows a Bohemian dinner as soon as the people whom she wanted got back to town. She said it was a Bohemian dinner, and she asked artists, mostly; but of course she had the Westleys and their friend Mrs. Rangeley. There were several of the Synthesis girls, who said the Synthesis would never be itself again without Cornelia, and there were some of the students, nice fellows, whom Charmian had liked; there were, of course, the Wetmores. Ludlow's picture was in evidence in a place of honor, especially created for it, and Wetmore said, when they sat down at dinner, "Well, Ludlow, all _this_ company can tell where you got your hollyhocks." Cornelia turned the color of the reddest in the picture, and Wetmore recognized her consciousness with the added remark, "Oh, you'll be in all his imaginative pictures, now, Mrs. Ludlow. That's the fate of the wife of an imaginative painter. But you really must get him to keep you out of his portraits." Charmian checked herself in a wild laugh, and sent Cornelia a look of fond and proud intelligence, which Mrs. Rangeley tapped, as it were, on its way up the length of the table. "O Mrs. Ludlow!" she entreated. "What is it? I hope it isn't professional envy! Is he afraid of Mr. Ludlow becoming too popular?" Ludlow answered for his wife, "Mrs. Rangeley, that was worthy even of you," and he boldly kissed his hand to her. The dinner was remembered for several weeks as one of the pleasantest people had ever been at, and it established Mrs. Maybough in such social acceptance that she was asked to the first of the Westley dinners, where swells prevailed, and where she was as null as any of them. But although Charmian was apparently radiant the whole evening, and would hardly let Cornelia go away at the end, she wanted her to stay so and talk it over, she had a girl's perverseness in not admitting the perfection of the occasion to Mrs. Maybough, when she said, "Well, my dear, I hope your dinner was Bohemian enough for you." "Bohemian!" she retorted. "It wasn't Bohemian at all. You oughtn't to have taken the ladies away at coffee. They ought to have stayed and had cigarettes with the gentlemen." "My dear, you know that the mere smell of tobacco makes you sick!" "No matter, I should--if I could only have seen Cornelia Ludlow smoking--I should have been willing to _die_. And now--now, I'm afraid she's going to be perfectly respectable!"