and agreed that it was very becoming; Mrs. Burton had said
so, too. The fashion of her hat she was not so sure about, but it was a
pretty hat, and unless she had got it on skewy, and she did not believe
she had, there was nothing about it to make people stare so. There was
one of these girls, whom Cornelia felt to be as tall as herself, and of
much her figure; she was as dark as Cornelia, but of a different
darkness. Instead of the red that always lurked under the dusk in
Cornelia's cheeks, and that now burned richly through it, her face was
of one olive pallor, except her crimson lips; her long eyes were black,
with level brows, and with a heavy fringe of lucent black hair cut
straight above them; her nose was straight, at first glance, but showed
a slight arch in profile; her mouth was a little too full, and her chin
slightly retreated. She came in late, and stopped at the door of the
office, and bent upon Cornelia a look at once prehistoric and _fin de
siecle_, which lighted up with astonishment, interest and sympathy,
successively; then she went trailing herself on up stairs with her
strange Sphinx-face over her shoulder, and turned upon Cornelia as long
as she could see her.

At last a gentleman came in and sat down behind the table in the
corner, and Cornelia found a hoarse voice to ask him if he was the
secretary. He answered in the friendly way that she afterwards found
went all through the Synthesis, that he was, and she said, with her
country bluntness, that she wished to study at the Synthesis, and she
had brought some of her drawings with her, if he wanted to look at
them. He took them, but either he did not want to look at them, or else
it was not his affair to do so. He said she would have to fill out a
form, and he gave her a blank which asked her in print a number of
questions she had not thought of asking herself till then. It obliged
her to confess that she had never studied under any one before, and to
say which master in the Synthesis she would like to study under, now.
She had to choose between life, and still-life, and the antique, and
she chose the antique. She was not governed by any knowledge or desire
in her choice more definite than such as come from her having read
somewhere that the instructor in the antique was the severest of all
the Synthesis instructors, and the most dreaded in his criticisms by
the students. She did not forget, even in the presence of the
secretary, and with that bewild