"I dropped casually that it had been hung with the Fifth Avenue exhibition of MacGregor's African studies, and she took the address. That was day before yesterday. This afternoon I met her again--met her leaving the gallery." "Well?" jogged Atwood, impatiently. "She told me she had bought two of MacGregor's things," continued Mrs. Van Ostade, not to be hurried. "She took a desert nocturne and that queer veiled woman at a window--you remember?" "Do I!" He spun about. "You heard that, Jean? Mrs. Joyce-Reeves has bought 'The Lattice'! Miss Fanshaw posed for it, Julie." "Indeed!" The lorgnon, again unsheathed at the intimate "Jean," once more took cognizance of that young person's existence. "I don't care for it. But, what is more important, Mrs. Joyce-Reeves mentioned your portrait." "Yes?" "And this time asked for your address." "Jove! You think--" "I'm positive she'll give you a commission." "Jove!" he exclaimed again, "what a chance!" and paced the studio. "Yet she may. It's her whim to pose as a discoverer. What a chance! What a colossal chance! It would mean--what wouldn't it mean?" He stopped excitedly before the escritoire where Jean sat waiting to resume her interrupted impersonation of a note-writing débutante. "It would take nerve, no end of it. She's been painted by Sargent, Chartran, Zorn--all the big guns. A fellow would have to find a phase they'd missed. But if he could! You can't conceive her influence, Jean. If she buys a man's pictures, all the little fish in her pond tumble over one another to buy them, too. That's not the main issue, however, though I don't blink its importance. The opportunity to paint _her_, to search out the woman behind--that's the big thing. I have a theory. I met her once--she'd bought an original of mine, thanks again to Julie--and something she let fall makes me think--but I'm talking as if I had the commission in my hands." Jean scarcely heard. Sympathize with him as she might, Julie Van Ostade's face, from the moment Atwood's talk ceased to be hers exclusively, absorbed her more. "Craig," broke in his sister, crisply, "my furs." He touched earth blankly. "Not going, Julie?" "My furs," she repeated. "But I haven't begun to thank you," he said, obeying. "Is not that also premature?" She rustled majestically toward the door, which he sprang before her to open. The girl was but a lay figure in her path. Then the door closed and Atwood, wearing a look of bewilderment, came slowly up the studio to meet still another problem in feminine psychology in the now thoroughly outraged Jean. "Why did you introduce me?" she demanded bitterly. "Why couldn't you let me remain a common model to her? I am a common model in her eyes--common in every sense. I remember well enough where she saw me, and she'll remember, too, never fear." "Jean! Jean!" He came to her in distress.