As usual, when Martha allowed herself to look at the princess, she forgot everything else. She had long ago had to make it a rule to place her easel so that she would be turned away from her enchantress while she was working; otherwise she could see and think only of her. At the present moment she was completely fascinated by the tall, strong figure, so firmly poised, with one foot advanced, and her body thrown backward from the slender waist, where a belt of old silver confined the folds of her red silk shirt-waist above the sweep of her skirt of dark green serge. This was her ordinary working-rig; and as she wore no apron, as most of the other students did, it was more or less streaked with paint. Martha herself wore her calico apron religiously, and was always neatly clothed beneath it; but she would have protested utterly against seeing her neighbor in an apron. It would have looked so unprincesslike! She was very tall and straight, this princess, and “Serene Highness” seemed to Martha to be written on every inch of her. There was not much sociability among the students in the atelier. They came from many different countries, and spoke many different tongues; and they were such a mixture of aristocrats and plebeians--some were so afraid of patronizing and others of being patronized,--that the conditions generally were such as were opposed to much mixing. Talking was forbidden during work-hours, except the little absolutely necessary whispering; and in the intermission at noon the princess always went away for lunch, and sometimes did not return. Martha, too, went to her mother’s apartment for the midday meal, though nothing ever prevented her from returning. Some of the students had chums, with whom they chatted glibly in the cloak-room; but as a rule, these intimacies had been formed outside. Martha Keene was a girl who would never have made the first advance toward an acquaintance with any one; for, although she had passed her twentieth year, she was incorrigibly shy. This reserve of manner was so evident that it discouraged advances from others. She knew this and regretted it, but could not help it. It had pleased Martha very much when, on a single occasion, this wall of isolation which she had built around herself had been broken through by a little American chatterbox, who had rattled away to her for ten minutes one day as she was waiting for her carriage in the cloak-room. This had been soon after her entrance at Etienne’s, and her voluble country-woman had vanished from the horizon the next day; but in that one talk she had got almost all the knowledge of the atelier which she possessed.