Prochnow spent the whole day working for Preciosa, oblivious of Virgilia's snares or of the debut of Robin Morrell. He heaved history, tradition, legend, mythology into the furnace, worked the bellows with indefatigable hand, blew his brains to a white heat and kept them there, and dropped down at dusk with his project complete. He had outlined two or three of his cartoons as well, and had even dashed out, on a small scale, the colour-scheme of the one that made the most immediate appeal. Little O'Grady, who had had all the trouble he anticipated with the chariot of Progress--and a good deal more--came in for a cup of Prochnow's potent, bewitching coffee. "Ignace!" he cried, wiping his clay-encrusted hands on the blue blouse, "you beat us all! You'll run away ahead of any one of us! Only, you'll kill yourself doing it!" "My first great chance," replied Prochnow. "I mustn't let it slip by." Within a few days this third scheme was brought into intelligible shape and sent off in pursuit of the scattered sons of finance. "It's a dead go!" cried Little O'Grady; "this time we get 'em sure!" His confidence was the light from the blazing furnace, just as Prochnow's intensity was its heat. When each believed so fully in himself and in the other how could the thought of failure intrude? "Ignace," said Little O'Grady, "this time they'll treat us right. You must take a better room than you have here. You must move downstairs, where people can find you, and where you will be able to let them in when they do. Ladies, now--how could you possibly receive them in such quarters as these?" Prochnow easily allowed himself to be persuaded. He was already beginning to see about how the cat jumped and to understand how much depended upon the gentle patronage of the luminaries of society. There was one little star, surely, whose light he should be glad to focus on himself once more--nor be indebted to another's kindness for the privilege. He had indeed ventured to call on Preciosa once or twice at her own home--in particular there was the evening on which, defying niggardly Fortune, he had invited her to the theatre, her passion; but Euphrosyne McNulty had not seemed fully able to understand him. She appeared to view him as a sort of unclassifiable young artisan and to find slight justification for his presence. She had other ideas for her daughter. "Come, make a stagger," said Little O'Grady encouragingly. "Take that other big room down there next to Gowan's. I'll cough up a few for you, and I'll let you have all the traps of mine you need. Take the Aztec jars and both the priceless Navajos that I have clung to through all my days of misery and privation." Prochnow made the move. Preciosa was among his first callers. His studio came to little compared with Dill's, and to little more compared with Gowan's; but the jars and the blankets did their part, the mandolin and the coffee-pot theirs; the portfolios were broken open to decorate the walls, and,----