Yet, for all its forbidding frown, its front bespeaks a certain consciousness of lingering dignity. A plate, set in the door-case, announces that the great Marston painted here a few scant years ago, and here still that more-or-less-distinguished instructor, Jean Hautecoeur, tells his pupils in the second-floor _atelier_ how it was done. He was telling them now. The model, who had been posed as, "Aphrodite Rising from the Foam," was resting. She sat on the dilapidated throne amid a circle of easels. A blanket was thrown about her, from the folds of which protruded a bare and shapely arm, the hand holding lightly between two fingers the cigarette with which she beguiled her recess. The master, looking about on the many industrious, if not intellectual, faces, was discoursing on Marston's feeling for values. "He did not learn it," declared M. Hautecoeur: "he was born with it. He did not acquire it: he evolved it. A faulty value caused him pain as a false note causes pain to the true musician." Then, realizing that this was dangerous doctrine from the lips of one who was endeavoring to instill the quality into others, born with less gifted natures, he hastened to amend. "Yet, other masters, less facile, have gained by study what they lacked by heritage." The room was bare except for its accessories of art. A few well-chosen casts hung about the walls. Many unmounted canvases were stacked in the corners, the floors were chalk-marked where easel-positions had been recorded; charcoal fragments crunched underfoot when one walked across the boards. From the sky-light--for the right of the building had only two floors--fell a flood of afternoon light, filtering through accumulated dust and soot. The door upon the outer hall was latched. The students, bizarre and unkempt in the bohemianism of their cult, mixed colors on their palettes as they listened. In their little world of narrow horizons, the discourse was like a prophet's eulogy of a god. As the master, his huge figure somewhat grotesque in its long, paint-smeared blouse and cap, stood delivering his lecture with much eloquence of gesture, he was interrupted by a rap on the door. Jacques du Bois, whose easel stood nearest the threshold, reluctantly took his pipe from his teeth, and turned the knob with a scowl for the interruption. For a moment, he stood talking through the slit with a gentleman in the hall-way, his eyes meanwhile studying with side-glances the lady who stood behind the gentleman. Then, he bowed and closed the door. "Someone wishes a word with M. Hautecoeur," he announced. The master stepped importantly into the hall, and Steele introduced himself. M. Hautecoeur declared that he quite well remembered monsieur and his excellent painting. He bowed to mademoiselle with unwieldly gallantry.