walls, and sloped so as to cut off half the
height of the room; and now it's a perfect symphony. You wouldn't have
thought it wasn't a real ceiling?"

"No, I shouldn't," said Cornelia, as much surprised as Charmian could
have wished.

"You can imagine what a relief it is to steal away here from all that
unreality of mamma's, down there, and give yourself up to the truth of
art; I just draw a long breath when I get in here, and leave the world
behind me. Why, when I get off here alone, for a minute, I unlace!"

Cornelia went about looking at the sketches on the walls; they were all
that mixture of bad drawing and fantastic thinking which she was used
to in the things Charmian scribbled over her paper at the Synthesis.
She glanced toward the easel, but Charmian said, "Don't look at it!
There's nothing there; I haven't decided what I shall do yet. I did
think I should paint this tiger skin, but I don't feel easy painting
the skin of a tiger I haven't killed myself. If I could get mamma to
take me out to India and let me shoot one! But don't you think the
whole place is perfect? I've tried to make it just what a studio ought
to be, and yet keep it free from pose, don't you know?"

"Yes," said Cornelia. "I've never seen a studio, before."

"You poor thing, you don't mean it!" cried Charmian in deep pity.
Cornelia said nothing, and Charmian went on with an air of candor,
"Well, I haven't seen a great many myself--only two or three--but I
know how they are, and it's easy enough to realize one. What I want is
to have the atmosphere of art about me, all the time. I'm like a fish
out of water when I'm out of the atmosphere of art. I intend to spend
my whole time here when I'm not at the Synthesis."

"I should think it would be a good place to work," Cornelia conceded.

"Yes, and I _am_ going to work here," said Charmian. "The great trouble
with me is that I have so many things in my mind I don't know which to
begin on first. That's why the Synthesis is so good for me; it
concentrates me, if it _is_ on a block hand. _You're_ concentrated by
nature, and so you can't feel what a glorious pang it is to be fixed to
one spot like a butterfly with a pin through you. I don't see how I
ever lived without the Synthesis. I'm going to have a wolf-hound--as
soon as I can get a good-tempered one that the man can lead out in the
Park for exercise--to curl up here in front of the fire; and I'm going
to have foils and masks over the chimn