She was a woman of commanding presence, with full lips, whose expression was contradicted by the almost haughty carriage of her fine head and the keen glance of her eye, which indicated too much character for the mere pleasure-seeker. Her hair was of a rich chestnut, and she wore a dress of steel gray cashmere, relieved at the throat by a knot of pale orange, which harmonized admirably with her clear complexion. She watched her companion as if secretly anxious for his good opinion of her drawings, yet too proud to betray any feeling in the matter. He, for his part, turned them over with seeming listlessness, breaking out now and then with some abrupt remark. "Yes," he said suddenly, after a ten minutes' silence, "I'm going to be married at once. It will be 'a marriage in the bush,' as the Suabians call an impecunious match, since neither of us has any money; and I, at least, haven't so great a superfluity of brains that in this intelligent age of the world I am ever likely to make much by selling myself; and that is the only way any body gets any money nowadays." "I hardly think you'd be willing to sell," his companion answered, "no matter how good the market." "There's where you are wrong," he answered, looking up with a sudden frown, "the worst thing about me is that with sufficient inducement--or even merely from the temptation of an especially good opportunity--I should sell myself body and soul to the Philistines." "One would hardly fancy it, from the way you talk of Peter Calvin and his followers." "Oh, as to that," retorted the artist, "don't you see that judicious opposition increases my market value when I am ready to sell? If I could only be sufficiently prominent in my antagonism, I might absolutely fix my own price." The lady made no answer, but regarded him more intently than ever. "That's a good thing," he broke out again, holding up a drawing. "Why don't you do that in marble, or better still, in bronze?" "I am putting it up in clay," she answered. "I thought I had shown it to you. It is to be fired as my first experiment in a big piece of terra-cotta. That is the first sketch; I think I have improved upon it." It was the study for a bas-relief representing the months, twelve characteristic figures running forward with the utmost speed. Gifts dropped from their hands as they ran; from the fingers of June fell flowers, from those of August and September ripened fruits, upon which November and December trampled ruthlessly. January, in his haste, overturned an altar against which February stumbles. "It is melancholy enough," Fenton observed, regarding it closely. "How melancholy every thing is now-a-days?" "To a man about to be married?" she asked, with a fine smile. "Oh, always to me. The fact that I am going to be married does not prevent my still being myself." "Unfortunately not," she returned, with a faint suspicion of sarcasm in her tone. "You pique yourself upon being somber."