Bruce remembered what Henderson had said about the guarded social acceptance of the patent medicine manufacturer and his family; but Millicent evidently didn’t resent her exclusion from the Claytons’ party. Social differentiations, Bruce imagined, mattered little to this girl, who was capable of fashioning her own manner of life, even to the point of building a temple for herself in which to worship gods of her own choosing. When he expressed interest in her modeling, which Dale Freeman had praised, Millicent led the way to a door opening into an extension of the library beyond the knight’s window, that served her as a studio. It was only a way of amusing herself, she said, when he admired a plaque of a child’s profile she confessed to be her work. The studio bore traces of recent use. Damp cloths covered several unfinished figures. There was a drawing-board in one corner and scattered among the casts on the wall were crayon sketches, merely notes, she explained, tacked up to preserve her impressions of faces that had interested her. He was struck by her freedom from pretense; when he touched on something of which she was ignorant or about which she was indifferent, she did not scruple to say so. Her imaginative, poetical side expressed itself with healthy candor and frequent flashes of girlish enthusiasm. She was wholly natural, refreshingly spontaneous in speech, with no traces of pedantry or conceit even in discussing music, in which her training had gone beyond the usual amateur’s bounds. “You haven’t been to see Leila yet? She asked you to call, and if you don’t go she’ll think it’s because of that little unpleasantness on the river. Leila’s altogether worth while.” Bruce muttered something about having been very busy. He had determined never to enter Franklin Mills’s house, and he was embarrassed by Millicent’s intimation that Leila might take it amiss that he ignored her invitation. “Leila’s a real person,” Millicent was saying. “Her great trouble is in trying to adjust herself to a way of life that doesn’t suit her a little bit.” “You mean----” he began and paused because he didn’t know at all what she meant. “I mean that living in a big house and going to teas and upholding the dignity of a prominent and wealthy family bores her to distraction. Her chief trouble is her way of protesting against the kind of life she’s born to. It’s screamingly funny, but Leila just hates being rich, and she’s terribly bored at having so much expected of her as her father’s daughter.” “His standard, then, is so high?” Bruce ventured, curious as to what further she might say of her neighbor.