“Ah, well”--it was so easy to be generous!--“that sort of thing did seem horrifying to Mrs. Clephane’s generation. After all, it was not so long before her day that Dr. Johnson said portrait-painting was indelicate in a female.” Mrs. Drover gave her sister-in-law a puzzled look. Her mind seldom retained more than one word in any sentence, and her answer was based on the reaction that particular word provoked. “_Female_--” she murmured--“is that word being used again? I never thought it very nice to apply it to women, did you? I suppose I’m old-fashioned. Nothing shocks the young people nowadays--not even the Bible.” Nothing could have given Kate Clephane greater confidence in her own success than this little talk with Enid Drover. She had been feeling her way so patiently, so stealthily almost, among the out-works and defences of her daughter’s character; and here she was actually instated in the citadel. Anne’s “studio-warming” strengthened the conviction. Mrs. Clephane had not been allowed to see the studio; Anne and Nollie and Joe Tresselton, for a breathless week, had locked themselves in with nails and hammers and pots of paint, sealing their ears against all questioning. Then one afternoon the doors were opened, and Kate, coming out of the winter twilight, found herself in a great half-lit room with a single wide window overlooking the reaches of the Sound all jewelled and netted with lights, the fairy span of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the dark roof-forest of the intervening city. It all seemed strangely significant and mysterious in that disguising dusk--full of shadows, distances, invitations. Kate leaned in the window, surprised at this brush of the wings of poetry. In the room, Anne had had the good taste to let the sense of space prolong itself. It looked more like a great library waiting for its books than a modern studio; as though the girl had measured the distance between that mighty nocturne and her own timid attempts, and wanted the implements of her art to pass unnoticed. They were sitting--Mrs. Clephane, the Joe Tresseltons and one or two others--about the tea-cups set out at one end of a long oak table, when the door opened and Lilla Gates appeared, tawny and staring, in white furs and big pendulous earrings. She brought with her a mingled smell of cigarettes and Houbigant, and as she stood there, circling the room with her sulky contemptuous gaze, Kate felt a movement of annoyance. “Why must one forever go on being sorry for Lilla?” she wondered, wincing a little as Anne’s lips touched her cousin’s mauve cheek. “It was nice of you to come, Lilla.” “Well--I chucked something bang-up for you,” said Lilla coolly. It was evidently her pride to be perpetually invited, perpetually swamped in a multiplicity of boring engagements. She looked about her again, and then dropped into an armchair. “Mercy--you _have_ cleared the decks!” she remarked. “Ain’t there going to be any more furniture than this?”