that special courtesy be shown by us to his friend,
the new Bishop, who is in the city, and who desires to inspect the
'Anchorage'. Cyril declines escorting the party, because he finds it
painful to meet you now, and he wishes particularly that you should
show your own department. I shall not be able to climb to the third
story, while my ankles are so swollen, so I must deputize you to do the
honors on your floor. Hold yourself in readiness, if I should send for
you, and do not forget to give the Bishop a package of the new
prospectus of the art school. That basket of orchids must be delivered
before five o'clock. Sister Joanna said you detained her to make a
sketch of it."

"I had almost finished when you summoned me. Send her up for the basket
in half an hour."

The long studio was deserted, and very quiet on that sultry Saturday
afternoon in midsummer, and the drowsy air was laden with fragrance
from the pots of white carnations, massed on the iron balcony, upon
which the tall, plate glass windows opened to the north. Down the
centre of the apartment ran a table covered with oil cloth, and on the
walls hung pictures in oil, water-color, crayon, while upon brackets
and pedestals were mounted plaster casts, terra cotta heads, a few
bronzes, and some hammered brass plaques. In the corners of the room,
four marvels of taxidermy contributed brilliant colors mixed on the
feathered palettes of a pea-fowl, a scarlet flamingo, a gold and a
silver pheasant, all perched on miniature mounds, built of curious
specimens of rock, of shells, coral and sphagnum.

The slow, languid swish, swish of the waters stirred by a passing
steamer, broke on the cliff beyond the wall; and along the sky line
where lake and atmosphere melted insensibly into blue distance, great
cumulus copper-colored clouds hooded with salmon-tinted folds, tipped
here and there with molten silver, shadowed with pearly hollows, hung
entranced by their own image, over the inland sea that gleamed like a
mirror.

At the end of the studio, near the open windows, Beryl had placed the
plateau basket of orchids on the table; and she stood before an easel,
transferring to the surface of a concave brass plaque, the fluted
outlines of the scarlet and orange ribbons, the vivid green, purple and
golden-brown lips, the rose velvet cups, the tender canary-hued calyxes
of the glistening floral mass, whose aroma seemed a panting breath from
equatorial jungles. Having secured