" he
concluded.

His neighbour across the landing--the little sculptor, Caspar Arran,
humorously called "Gasper" on account of his bronchial asthma--had
lately been joined by a sister, Kate Arran, a strapping girl, fresh
from the country, who had installed herself in the little room off her
brother's studio, keeping house for him with a chafing-dish and a
coffee-machine, to the mirth and envy of the other young men in the
building.

Poor little Gasper had been very bad all the autumn, and it was
surmised that his sister's presence, which he spoke of growlingly, as a
troublesome necessity devolved on him by the inopportune death of an
aunt, was really an indication of his failing ability to take care of
himself. Kate Arran took his complaints with unfailing good-humour,
darned his socks, brushed his clothes, fed him with steaming broths and
foaming milk-punches, and listened with reverential assent to his
interminable disquisitions on art. Every one in the house was sorry for
little Gasper, and the other fellows liked him all the more because it
was so impossible to like his sculpture; but his talk was a bore, and
when his colleagues ran in to see him they were apt to keep a hand on
the door-knob and to plead a pressing engagement. At least they had
been till Kate came; but now they began to show a disposition to enter
and sit down. Caspar, who was no fool, perceived the change, and
perhaps detected its cause; at any rate, he showed no special
gratification at the increased cordiality of his friends, and Kate, who
followed him in everything, took this as a sign that guests were to be
discouraged.

There was one exception, however: Ned Stanwell, who was deplorably
good-natured, had always lent a patient ear to Caspar, and he now
reaped his reward by being taken into Kate's favour. Before she had
been a month in the building they were on confidential terms as to
Caspar's health, and lately Stanwell had penetrated farther, even to
the inmost recesses of her anxiety about her brother's career. Caspar
had recently had a bad blow in the refusal of his _magnum opus_--a vast
allegorical group--by the Commissioners of the Minneapolis Exhibition.
He took the rejection with Promethean irony, proclaimed it as the
clinching proof of his ability, and abounded in reasons why, even in an
age of such crass artistic ignorance, a refusal so egregious must react
to the advantage of its object. But his sister's indignation, if as
glowin