t mass of brown, sensuous hair massed at the back of the head,
the flowerlike lips and soft cheeks. He marveled at the suggestion of
the breasts and the abdomen, that potentiality of motherhood that is so
firing to the male. He could have stood there hours dreaming,
luxuriating, but the attendant who had left him alone with it for a few
minutes returned.

"What is the price of this?" Eugene asked.

"Ten thousand dollars," was the reply.

He smiled solemnly. "It's a wonderful thing," he said, and turned to go.
The attendant put out the light.

This picture, like those of Verestchagin, made a sharp impression on
him. Curiously he had no longing to paint anything of this kind. He only
rejoiced to look at it. It spoke to him of his present ideal of
womanhood--physical beauty, and he longed with all his heart to find a
creature like that who would look on him with favor.

There were other exhibitions--one containing a genuine Rembrandt--which
impressed him, but none like these that had definitely stirred him. His
interest in art was becoming eager. He wanted to find out all about
it--to do something himself. One day he ventured to call at the Art
Institute building and consult the secretary, who explained to him what
the charges were. He learned from her, for she was a woman of a
practical, clerical turn, that the classes ran from October to May, that
he could enter a life or antique class or both, though the antique alone
was advisable for the time, and a class in illustration, where costumes
of different periods were presented on different models. He found that
each class had an instructor of supposed note, whom it was not necessary
for him to see. Each class had a monitor and each student was supposed
to work faithfully for his own benefit. Eugene did not get to see the
class rooms, but he gained a sense of the art of it all, nevertheless,
for the halls and offices were decorated in an artistic way, and there
were many plaster casts of arms, legs, busts, and thighs and heads. It
was as though one stood in an open doorway and looked out upon a new
world. The one thing that gratified him was that he could study pen and
ink or brush in the illustration class, and that he could also join a
sketch class from five to six every afternoon without extra charges if
he preferred to devote his evening hours to studying drawing in the life
class. He was a little astonished to learn from a printed prospectus
given him that the lif