Jean had no galling sense of pupilage--the thing was too delicately done. Often Julie's lessons took the sugar-coated form of a gentle conspiracy against Craig, who, his sister confided, had in some respects lapsed into a bohemianism which needed its corrective. A portrait-painter, she reasoned, must defer to society more than other artists. It was an essential part of his work to acquaint himself sympathetically with the ways of the leisured class who made his profession commercially possible. Mrs. Joyce-Reeves furnished a concrete illustration. Even if the studio stairs had not proved too great an obstacle for her years, how enormously more to Craig's advantage it was that he could paint her here! Coming to this house, his sitter entered no alien environment. She retained her atmosphere. "I make it a point to serve tea at their afternoon sittings," she added. "And I try to chat with her whenever I can. It draws her out, lets Craig see her as she really is, makes up for his lack of knowledge of her individuality." Plastic as she was under coaching, Jean nursed a healthy doubt of the wisdom of Mrs. Van Ostade's constant presence in the billiard-room over the extension, which Atwood had chosen for the work because of its excellent north light. When had he so changed that the chatter of a third person helped him to paint? Moreover, Craig was openly dissatisfied. "I'm only marking time," he fretted, as he and Jean sat together before the canvas after Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's third sitting. "All my preconceived notions were merely blind scents. I'm not getting at the woman behind." "Yet it's wonderfully like her," she encouraged, studying the strong, mocking old face. "So are her photographs! Is that portraiture? Look at their stuff," he cried, catching a handful of unmounted prints from a drawer. "See what Huntington did with her girlhood! See Millais's woman of thirty! Look at Zorn's great portrait! Take Sargent's!" "But none of them have painted her old age," she reminded. "You have that advantage." "And what have I got out of it? Wrinkles!" Crossing Madison Square a day or two later, Jean met MacGregor. He had congratulated them promptly by letter and sent them one of his desert studies which he knew for a favorite; but she had not come face to face with him since her marriage. She wanted to speak to him, for an unfulfilled penance hung over her, and almost her first word was a confession of her feeling that she had done Julie an injustice. He listened with a caustic stare. "Buried the hatchet?" he remarked. "If there ever was a hatchet. I'm not so sure there was. I think we both misjudged her." "Both, eh!" snorted MacGregor, huffily. "I dare say. After all, I'm a raw young thing with no experience." "No; seriously," Jean laughed. He changed the topic. "Is the portrait coming on?" he asked. "Craig is despondent."