"Perhaps it would n't," Gertrude said suddenly. Anything was better than this effort to make conversation, and it was selfish of her to keep them home. It was her duty to go out with her children.

They were incredulous and delighted. Even Evelyn's pouting face looked agreeable, and she started to put down the sweater she was knitting.

"Would you really like to go?" Chris asked. Chris was getting so

feet in a minute.

"Wait till I find my fan," Gertrude

said.

They moved out through the dark hallway and down the steps of the porch. And now, as Gertrude looked at her children, she noticed that they were invested with a melancholy dignity-the dignity, she reflected, of suffering. A high sense of duty lent nobility to their mien and gestures: they were taking their mother to the movies.

V

ERY young, ecstatic, inexpressi

bly nervy, I joined the students who had assembled from the four corners of the earth for the opening of the Académie Whistler. That day there was tension in the air of the old house in the passage Stanislas.

The enormous, high-ceiled room which had been allotted to the women's life class was on the ground floor, and one entered from the corridor by a door at the top of a short flight of steps. This door was flung open. Every one held her breath; I could hear the whistling intake as they stopped breathing.

Carmen, with the grand gesture, appeared against banked shadows. With her great Italian chest flung back, her still beautiful head high in air, in her deep voice the roll of drums, she announced:

"Monsieur Whistlaire!"

She stood aside. The pride of an impresario in her majestic mien, she made way for a figure that now took the spot-light-a man clothed in black from head to foot; very slim, very odd, tremendously tall. About this black figure was no color except the red of the cheeks and the stubborn under lip and the amazing blue of the deep-set

eyes. These eyes swept the room in a rapid glance. There was a light behind the blue, which was the deep cobalt of willow-pattern plates, a sparkling malice. He was laughing at us!

He handed to Carmen the great coat which had hung over his arm, the high hat which he had held in his hand. Into his right eye he screwed a monocle. He took a long time about it. He stood on that upper step like a première danseuse; a pause; the impression of being on his toes before a thrilled audience.

The immensely tall black figure came down the steps to the floor of the atelier.

"Goodness!" I said to myself, with an ecstatic prance behind my easel, "he's not much taller than I am!"

My turn at criticism came. I knew that a Mephistophelian terror was standing behind me, I knew that he looked like the devil; but I kept my eyes fixed on the daub that I had spread upon my canvas.

"Marvelous! Mademoiselle, do you call this a painting?" demanded the rasping voice. "The violence of youth is in these colors." The sparkling eyes were turned full upon me; they looked

me over from head to foot. The malice died, and the laugh grew back behind the cobalt. "Finish your education, mademoiselle; enlarge your brain. No one starts at your tender age with a brain. One cultivates it, coaxes it, helps it along, as one waters a flower which is to grow into a beautiful thing." His long fingers were painting in the air the growth of the beautiful thing.

"Some people do start with brains," I replied stubbornly. "And, besides, I am your cousin."

Raucous laughter from the master; stares from the students, who considered that I was disgracing their gild; from the culprit joyous shouts as I watched the ice break up.

"Mademoiselle my cousin!" said he, with an exaggerated bow. "I should have known it, should have felt it, from your amazing cheek! Only 'de fambly' could produce cheek of a quality so rare!"

Behold those skipping feet of mine running in and out of the studio on the rue Notre Dame des Champs! Behold the master, tolerant, amused, as at the antics of a kitten!

"What am I to call you?" I inquired fairly, in the spirit of meeting any prejudices half-way. "Cousin Jimmie?"

"Never! Many persons have called me Jimmie, and with few exceptions I have eventually wished to smite them hip and thigh. Think of something else, please, missie of 'de fambly."" "Cousin Butterfly, then? That sounds nice and pretty and-and

frisky. You know? Something one can play games with."

Never did young person take part in such strange conversations as those which were overheard by the dingy walls

and by the attentive Carmen. My English was slangy, my French the argot of the models with whom I persisted in chatting upon every occasion. Cousin Butterfly's French was as exquisite as Racine's, his English the tongue of Shakspere, of Beaumont and Fletcher, of the Bible. There were Bibles at the studio and at his house in the rue du Bac.

"Are you very religious, then?" I inquired with great interest.

"Well, now, you know, all lovers of art believe in some sort of religion. It is more beautiful to believe that we shall end up in another world than that the worms are the end of us. That is not a pretty thought-worms. Therefore we have religion, which is pretty. Everything, even Nature, has to be helped out in order to be pretty. Nature does not arrange her materials in a beautiful manner; but we take those materials from her lap, and rearrange them beautifully. And that is art."

"Then why did you leave this studio so ugly and bare? There is n't a pretty thing in it except the stackedup pictures. And no one can see those, whether they are beautiful or not, for you have their faces turned to the wall as if they had been naughty."

"They have been naughty, many of them; they have given me much trouble. But this studio, now, this is a workshop. Beautiful things come out of here, to be shown; but the artist at work is not on exhibition. I establish the Académie Carmen, in the passage Stanislas, within a charming

old house that the minds of the students may be suitably stimulated; I establish myself at the top of this very hideous building that the attention of the sight-seer may not be drawn this way."

"You don't look just right for an artist, I don't believe," I said critically.

He laughed, but I did not mind his laughing now. I was growing to discriminate between his laughter at the world and his laugh with the few.

"As you go along the path, missie, you will discover that only those whose minds are still the minds of students dress the part of artist. Dirty finger-nails, uncombed hair, outrageous clothes-such stage properties are not nourished by brains, but by a bogus growth miscalled talent." He was, as he spoke, assiduously removing from his own long and pointed nails the marks of toil. As he continued to tell me of his detestation for the velveteen jackets, baggy trousers, ties like sashes, and wide-brimmed hats, he went on polishing those nails until they would have done credit to a fine lady. "Those clothes are the 'props' of the Boul' Miche'," he added.

"How about Carolus Duran wearing a gold link bracelet? I saw it below his cuff."

The most subtle smile that the world has seen since Machiavelli conceived his "Prince," but no answer in words.

"And you don't wear the right sort of tie!" I shouted triumphantly. "Father would not wear that tie when he got into evening clothes or any other sort of clothes! It is an artistic tie, Cousin Butterfly!"

severely. "It is, however, beautiful. Your father would undoubtedly think it beautiful; but he could not afford to wear my beautiful tie into a courtroom, because the minds of the other lawyers and of the judges are not educated up to beauty."

"Then," I persisted-"then it is an artistic tie, and there is, must be, such a thing as artistic license."

We dropped the subject of the tie. We ate the omelet that Carmen had cooked for us.

"Food can be beautiful," he remarked. "All work into which one has thrown the best that is in one thereby becomes a work of art. This omelet, my little Carmen, is beautiful."

Carmen, a foot taller than he, and three times as heavy, threw out her chest.

"Monsieur Whistlaire," she stammered, "thank you! Oh, thank you!"

He rose from the table and walked across the room to the long mirror.

"I do not see how you can think that anything about me looks artistic, which is a most abominable word. I have the flat back, the square shoulders of a West-Pointer; I have the feet of a gentleman. The tie is beautiful, but it is not artistic, as I have explained."

In the meantime I had bethought me of another argument.

"Your hats are odd," I commented. "Your father does not wear such hats; is that it? Well, now, you see, my hats are a part of me, as a man's hats should be. They fit me; they are becoming. Why should the ladies wear the only becoming clothes? You

out in hot haste and buy for myself one of those shocking bowlers that the Englishmen wear. Let the dear Britishers place upon their heads whatever pleases their fancy. Their faces suit their bowlers. I shall wear the French hats."

To this subject of clothes we continually returned.

"Are you determined to be a painter?" he inquired.

"I am determined to be somethingsomething big, nothing in which I have to be small," I modestly announced.

"We shall go on Sunday to Fontainebleau. Near Fontainebleau is something which I shall show you for the good of your soul."

To Fontainebleau we went just about the time when, if I had been in America, we should have been preparing for Thanksgiving. In that misty forest, with its blue and lavender shadows, there might have been whole flocks of turkeys, I brooded, if only these foreigners knew about turkeys.

On past Fontainebleau, out from the blue and lavender shadows, to the hamlet of By. We walked across fields to where we could discern a small, baggy figure hunched up before an enormous canvas-a little man, with straggling gray hair beneath a disreputable slouch hat; shoes caked with the mud of the fields. No attention was paid to us as we approached; work, work, work at the cows on the canvas, while the cows of the fields looked on with phlegm.

The little old man lifted his head. Not a little old man, but a little old woman-Rosa Bonheur!

I went home lost in thought.

"She is n't afraid of cows," I remarked finally. "Do you suppose that that is because of her clothes?"

"Well, now, missie, that is exactly why I took you to see her. She is a serious worker. She does not care how she looks, whether or not she is pretty or alluring. Are you willing to give up all future allurements? Are you willing to wear 'pants,' which are essentially ugly things?"

In the back regions of the Académie Whistler Rossi played always on his harp. Rossi had temperament. He made his lovely music for a while, and then he would take a rest and knock Carmen about; for was she not his wife? All this would she pour forth to her idol, "Monsieur Whistlaire," when she escorted me to déjeuner in the rue Notre Dame des Champs.

"Monsieur Whistlaire," said Carmen, tragically, "Rossi is a variety of brute. He goes to love that harp, but me? Ah, non. I am as the dirt under his feet."

"Well, now, my little Carmen," began Monsieur Whistler, soothingly, "you loved him, did you not, when you married him? I seem to remember your saying that you would die for him--and that you were convinced he would kill himself if you did not marry him."

"Ah, bah!" exclaimed Carmen in profound disgust. "Did I say all of that? Alors Such is marriage, mademoiselle. It is well that mademoiselle know all of these revelations about marriage before she grows to marry: is it not so, Monsieur Whistlaire? Remember, mademoiselle!