“It is difficult to say who has and who has not talent. So far I have seen no signs of it in your work here. Unquestionably you have the cartoon gift, but as for painting—still a great desire may do much. Rome wasn’t built in a day.” She had listened attentively, almost hopefully, until those last words. Then she knew that he was doing what Nels would have called “stalling.” He did not believe that there was any chance for her. He rose and went on about his tour of inspection, and Ruth sank down into the empty chair. She did not work any more, but sat still, looking at her work, but not thinking of it—not thinking of anything. She was roused by seeing the other students filing out at the luncheon hour. She did not want to see Nels and Dorothy; she would not go to their restaurant, instead she would eat the “cheap and wholesome” lunch offered in the building. There she would be with strangers. She ate something, she did not know what, and returned to her life class, but again she could not work. She was beginning to think definitely now. She had no talent—no future. If she could not be a great artist, a great painter, there was nothing in life for her. She didn’t want anything else, not even love. If she could come to Terry with a great gift, she would not stop hoping that he would love her, but to be just an ordinary woman—just a wife. If she was not to be a great painter, then what was she to be? Very carefully she went over every word of the professor. He had admitted that it was difficult to say exactly whether she had talent or not; he had only said that he had discovered no signs of it. Yet he was only one man. Thousands of geniuses in every field of endeavour had been discouraged by their elders simply because the new genius worked in a different manner from those who had gone before. But that didn’t apply to herself. She had no new and original methods. She changed her style of work every day in response to something she had heard or had seen. She had no knowledge, no ideas about art, in herself. Yet all beginners must be swayed by what they saw and heard, influenced by this or that painter from day to day, until they found themselves. Then she wondered if she had a self to find. She was vaultingly ambitious; she was industrious and something of a dreamer, but with all this Ruth was practical. She thought of perpetual students—did she want to become one of them? That was what it meant, following a muse who had not called. Art is not chosen. It chooses its own. Dorothy Winslow was wrong—fame could not be achieved merely by ambition, energy, and determination—neither is genius the art of taking pains, she thought. Sometimes it is achieved with infinite carelessness. The hour was afternoon, class was over and she had not touched crayon to paper. Not until she was on the street, hurrying out to avoid speaking to Nels or Dorothy, did she remember her engagement with Terry. Mori’s was on Forty-second Street. If she