deas for your statue? That is what I want
to know. Years ago, a bas-relief, very much like yours--I should
almost say identically yours--was made by my cousin, Antony
Fairfax, in Albany. That bas-relief took the ten-thousand-dollar
prize in Chicago. It was, unfortunately, destroyed in a fire, and
no record of it was kept. My cousin is dead. For this reason I
write to ask you where you got your inspiration for the 'Open
Door.' It can be nothing to him that his beautiful work has been
more beautifully done by a stranger, can do him no harm, but I want
to know. Will you write me to the care of the Women's Art League,
5th Avenue, New York? Perhaps you will not deign to answer this
letter. Do not think that I am making any reproach to you. It can
be nothing to my cousin; he is dead but it would be a comfort to
me. Once again, I hope you will let me hear from you.

"Yours faithfully,
"BELLA CAREW."

The man reading in his studio looked at the signature, looked at the
handwriting, held it before his eyes, to which the tears rushed. He
pressed the faintly scented pages to his lips. Gallant little Bella ...
He stretched out his arms in the darkness, called to her across three
thousand miles--

"Little cousin, please Heaven he can show you some day, Bella Carew."

It was at this time that he modelled his wonderful bust of Bella Carew.

When he finished the "Open Door," he said that he would not work for a
year, that he was exhausted bodily and mentally; certainly he had lacked
inspiration. But the afternoon of the day on which he had read this
letter--this letter that opened for him a future--he set feverishly to
work and modelled. He made a head of Bella which the critics have
likened to the busts of Houdon, Carpeaux, and other masters. He modelled
from memory, guided by his recollections of that picturesque face he had
seen under the big hat on the outskirts of the crowd before his
bas-relief. He modelled from memory, from imagination, with hope and new
love, from old love too; told himself he had fallen in love with Bella
the first night he had seen her, when she had comforted him about his
heavy step.

Into the beautiful head and face he worked upon he put all his ideal of
what a woman's face should be. He fell in love with his creation, in
love with the clay that he moulded. Once more he had a companion in the
studio from which had been rem