and was courting her, or, rather, being courted by her at odd moments, for her time was her own. In her artistically errant way she had refused to go to school like her sister, and was idling about, developing, as she phrased it, her artistic possibilities. Cowperwood, as was natural, heard much of her stage life. At first he took all this palaver with a grain of salt, the babbling of an ardent nature interested in the flighty romance of the studio world. By degrees, however, he became curious as to the freedom of her actions, the ease with which she drifted from place to place—Lane Cross’s studio; Bliss Bridge’s bachelor rooms, where he appeared always to be receiving his theatrical friends of the Garrick Players; Mr. Gardner Knowles’s home on the near North Side, where he was frequently entertaining a party after the theater. It seemed to Cowperwood, to say the least, that Stephanie was leading a rather free and inconsequential existence, and yet it reflected her exactly—the color of her soul. But he began to doubt and wonder. “Where were you, Stephanie, yesterday?” he would ask, when they met for lunch, or in the evenings early, or when she called at his new offices on the North Side, as she sometimes did to walk or drive with him. “Oh, yesterday morning I was at Lane Cross’s studio trying on some of his Indian shawls and veils. He has such a lot of those things—some of the loveliest oranges and blues. You just ought to see me in them. I wish you might.” “Alone?” “For a while. I thought Ethel Tuckerman and Bliss Bridge would be there, but they didn’t come until later. Lane Cross is such a dear. He’s sort of silly at times, but I like him. His portraits are so bizarre.” She went off into a description of his pretentious but insignificant art.