r two whom he noted were beautiful in a dark way. This was a
wonderful world.

The rooms too, were exceptional. They were old enough in use to be
almost completely covered, as to the walls, with the accumulation of
paint scraped from the palettes. There were no easels or other
paraphernalia, but simply chairs and little stools--the former, as
Eugene learned, to be turned upside down for easels, the latter for the
students to sit on. In the center of the room was a platform, the height
of an ordinary table, for the model to pose on, and in one corner a
screen which constituted a dressing room. There were no pictures or
statuary--just the bare walls--but curiously, in one corner, a piano.
Out in the halls and in the general lounging center were pictures of
nude figures or parts of figures posed in all sorts of ways which
Eugene, in his raw, youthful way, thought suggestive. He secretly
rejoiced to look at them but he felt that he must not say anything about
what he thought. An art student, he felt sure, must appear to be
indifferent to such suggestion--to be above such desire. They were here
to work, not to dream of women.

When the time came for the classes to assemble there was a scurrying to
and fro, conferring between different students, and then the men found
themselves in one set of rooms and the women in another. Eugene saw a
young girl in his room, sitting up near the screen, idly gazing about.
She was pretty, of a slightly Irish cast of countenance, with black hair
and black eyes. She wore a cap that was an imitation of the Polish
national head-dress, and a red cape. Eugene assumed her to be the class
model and secretly wondered if he was really to see her in the nude. In
a few minutes all the students were gathered, and then there was a stir
as there strolled in a rather vigorous and picturesque man of thirty-six
or thereabouts, who sauntered to the front of the room and called the
class to order. He was clad in a shabby suit of grey tweed and crowned
with a little brown hat, shoved rakishly over one ear, which he did not
trouble to take off. He wore a soft blue hickory shirt without collar or
tie, and looked immensely self-sufficient. He was tall and lean and
raw-boned, with a face which was long and narrow; his eyes were large
and wide set, his mouth big and firm in its lines; he had big hands and
feet, and an almost rolling gait. Eugene assumed instinctively that this
was Mr. Temple Boyle, N. A., the class i