"No," Helen answered. "I am really doing little since I came home. I am waiting until the time serves, I suppose." She spoke without especial thought of what she was saying, desiring merely to cover any indications which might show the feeling aroused by what she had just heard and the decision she had just taken to have nothing to do with the contest for the statue of _America_, although she had begun a study for the figure. "I admire you for being able to make time serve you instead of serving time like the rest of us," Mrs. Frostwinch said. "I shouldn't hear another call you a time server without taking up the cudgels to defend you," responded Edith. Mrs. Frostwinch smiled in reply to this. Then she turned again to Helen. "To tell the truth, Mrs. Greyson," she observed, "I am glad you are not concerned in this statue, for I am myself one of a band of conspirators who are pushing the claims of a new man." "Is there a new sculptor?" Helen asked, smiling. "That is wonderful news." "Yes; we think he is the coming man. His name is Stanton; Orin Stanton." "Oh," responded Helen, with involuntary frankness in her accent. Mrs. Frostwinch laughed with perfect good nature. "You don't admire him?" she commented. "Well, many don't. To say the truth, I do not think anybody alive, if you will pardon me, Mrs. Greyson, knows the truth about sculpture. Perhaps the Greeks did, but we don't, even when we are told. I know the Soldiers' Monument on the Common is hideous beyond words, because everybody says so; but they didn't when it was put up. Only a few artists objected then." "And the fact that a few artists have brought everybody to their opinion," Edith asked, "doesn't make you feel that they must be right; must have the truth behind them?" "No; frankly, I can't say that it does," Mrs. Frostwinch responded. She leaned back in her chair, a soft flush on her thin, high-bred face. Her figure, in a beautiful gown of beryl plush embroidered with gold, seemed artistically designed for the carved, high-backed chair in which she sat, and both her companions were too appreciative to lose the grace of the picture she made. "I cannot see that it is bad," she went on. "Mr. Fenton has proved it to me, and even Mr. Herman, who seems, so far as I have seen him, the most charitable of men, when I asked him how he liked it, spoke with positive loathing of it. I can't manage to make myself unhappy over it, that's all. And I believe I am as appreciative as the average."