She took refuge in an opportunism not unlike Amy's. Did not time and chance rule the world! Yet her peace of mind was fitful, and she shunned the Copley Studios with a fear which hearkened to no argument. It was useless to remind herself that Satterlee was a man of many interests. Her imagination always figured him as haunting the room where she had come upon him. There he waited, a rotund bomb by the mantelpiece, with the explosive "Bartlett" in his subconsciousness ready to destroy her the instant her face should at last apply the fatal spark. So it fell out that, pleading her own work whenever Craig, himself absorbed in the Hepworth portrait, asked her opinion of his sister's ideas, the new studio's furnishing went forward without her and in unhampered accord with Julie's ambitious plans. How far-reaching these plans were she first adequately perceived through MacGregor, whose card came up to her one evening when both Atwood and Mrs. Van Ostade were out. "I counted on finding you alone," he owned with characteristic bluntness. "Craig has gone to the Salmagundi doings, of course,--I'm due there later; while I happen to know that Julie is dining with her mother-in-law. I met Julie this afternoon at the Copley Studios." "Then you saw Craig's new quarters?" "Yes. Have you seen them?" "Why do you ask that question?" "I gathered that you hadn't." "I went there the day Craig took the place." "And have not returned! Why?" "I am working hard with Richter." "So he tells me. Don't overwork. Art isn't everything." "Aren't you inconsistent?" she laughed. "Lord, yes! Consistently inconsistent. Life would lose half its sparkle, if I weren't. But the new studio; you should have a look in; it would interest you. I don't often trouble the pink-tea district, but an errand took me into the Copley building to-day just as Julie entered, and she offered to show me through." His meditations became irksome. "Well?" Jean prompted. "Julie should have been a stage-manager," he said. "Her scenic instinct is remarkable. She sees Craig's place peopled with a fashionable portrait-painter's clientele, and has set her properties accordingly. His Italian finds,--his tapestries, his old furniture, his Pompeian bronzes,--the new grand piano, and the various other newnesses, all present themselves as background for society drama. I take off my hat to her. She, too, is an artist, an artist of imagination. It is all perfectly done. Nothing lacks but the fashionable portrait-painter." "And the drama?" Jean suggested. "Oh, that is being looked after. She plans a house-warming of some sort. You haven't been consulted?" "No."