"You look like a gur-rl that’d have an eye and a taste for beauty. You don’t find them often among Americans, and when you do it’s a god-send. Poles, Jews, Russians, yes. When the French and Italian officers was in New York, their eyes ’d fairly eat the museum up. But Americans—they don’t know and they don’t want to know—not wan in a hundred thousand. Well, good-day to you and good luck. I’m always here, and I’m just the wan to tell you which is the things to pick out." But by the time she discovered her Lady Hamilton she had only the courage to note listlessly that the hair _was_ somewhat the color of her own—not chestnut, not russet, not copper, not red-gold, but perhaps a combination of them all. She had reached her limitations unexpectedly. The tide she had dammed had burst its barriers and rushed in on her. She sank to a chair in the middle of the almost empty room, her eyes blinded by sudden tears. Hubert was still with that woman! The woman was perhaps resting now and they were talking! She would be so much at her ease that she would talk without taking the trouble to throw her wrap round her. Hubert, too, would be at ease, preferring her without her wrap rather than with it. In vain she reminded herself that the situation was one to which an artist was accustomed. She hadn’t been in a studio for a year without learning that much, though she got no comfort from it now. No comfort was possible with the vision of this naked magnificence seared on her memory. Hubert had let her come without a welcome, and go without a protest. He was probably glad when she went so that he might be alone with this wanton who didn’t know shame. In the end, she saw but one course before her. She would make the best of Bob. To do so would mean that Bob would be disinherited by his ogre of a father, but with Mrs. Collingham’s aid a counteracting influence might be found. Moreover, she could thus return home, confess herself Bob’s wife, and offer the hundred dollars to her father as cash lawfully her own. Life would be simplified in this way, even though happiness were dead. She was the last of the commuting family to reach the house that evening, and on crossing the threshold was greeted with a sense of cheer. It did not mean much to her at first, for, with the optimism of a hand-to-mouth existence, a sense of cheer was the last thing the family ever abandoned. She herself cast all outward air of trouble away from her on opening the door, because it was in the tradition. Her father was seated quietly smoking his pipe, which he had not done for the past week or more. Gussie held the middle of the floor, her arms extended in a serpentine wave, humming a dance tune and practicing the step. To mark the rhythm, Gladys was clapping her hands with a slow, tom-tom beat. Pansy alone stood apart, blinking and unresponsive, as if for reasons of her own she considered this mirth ill-timed.