About this time Jean left Mrs. St. Aubyn's, whose neighborhood Paul, after dejected silence, had again begun to haunt. She had thus far eluded him, but meet they must, she felt, if she remained; and with Amy's abrupt departure, which now came to pass, she changed to a boarding-house of Atwood's recommending in Irving Place. "There are no signs of the trade about it, fashionable or unfashionable," he said. "It's just a homelike place, neither too large nor too small, where you will see mainly art students. Many of them, like you, are making their own way, and all of them are dead in earnest. All the illustrators know Mrs. Saunders. Half of us have lived under her roof some time or other." "You, too!" He smiled at her tone. "I wasn't born with a golden spoon, you know. Some New Yorkers aren't. I inherited a little money, but I'm not a plutocrat yet, even if editors do smile upon me. Julie and I thoroughly mastered the gentle art of scrimping at one time. Have I ever mentioned my sister, Mrs. Van Ostade?" "You spoke of her the day I saw you first." "At the birches?" he returned, surprised. "You said she would not understand." His eyes sobered. "I remember," he said. "And it was true. Neither would she understand now, I fear. She has been both wedded and widowed since. You'll see her at the studio yet, if MacGregor ever lets us begin work together. She surprises me there when she thinks I am neglecting my duties as a social being. Julie has all the zeal of a proselyte in her missionary labors for society," he added laughingly. "She married into one of the old Dutch families." Jean found that a tradition of Mrs. Van Ostade's residence in Irving Place still lingered there. She was spoken of as Craig Atwood's sister, the clever girl who had jockied for position, on nothing a year, by cultivating fashionable charities. Settlement work, it appeared, had been the fulcrum for her lever. No one here, however, had known her personally, save Mrs. Saunders, who was a paragon of reticence when gossip was afield. Indeed, a dearth of gossip, in the invidious sense of the word, was a negative virtue to which her whole establishment might lay claim. Mainly art students, as Atwood had predicted, the sharpest personalities of Jean's new acquaintances dealt with the vagaries of masters whom they furtively admired and not seldom aped. Thus the life-class girl would furrow her pretty forehead over the drawing of a beginner at antique with the precise "Ha!" and "Not half bad!" of the distinguished artist and critic who twice a week set her own heart palpitating with his crisp condemnation or praise.