he laughed. "There's some edge to that."

The boys would sit and laugh and jest with this girl, and she would
laugh and coquette in return. He saw her strolling about looking at some
of the students' drawings of her over their shoulders, standing face to
face with others--and so calmly. The strong desire which it invariably
aroused in Eugene he quelled and concealed, for these things were not to
be shown on the surface. Once, while he was looking at some photographs
that a student had brought, she came and looked over his shoulder, this
little flower of the streets, her body graced by the thin scarf, her
lips and cheeks red with color. She came so close that she leaned
against his shoulder and arm with her soft flesh. It pulled him tense,
like a great current; but he made no sign, pretending that it was the
veriest commonplace. Several times, because the piano was there, and
because students would sing and play in the interludes, she came and sat
on the piano stool herself, strumming out an accompaniment to which some
one or three or four would sing. Somehow this, of all things, seemed
most sensuous to him--most oriental. It set him wild. He felt his teeth
click without volition on his part. When she resumed her pose, his
passion subsided, for then the cold, aesthetic value of her beauty became
uppermost. It was only the incidental things that upset him.

In spite of these disturbances, Eugene was gradually showing improvement
as a draughtsman and an artist. He liked to draw the figure. He was not
as quick at that as he was at the more varied outlines of landscapes and
buildings, but he could give lovely sensuous touches to the human
form--particularly to the female form--which were beginning to be
impressive. He'd got past the place where Boyle had ever to say "They're
round." He gave a sweep to his lines that attracted the instructor's
attention.

"You're getting the thing as a whole, I see," he said quietly, one day.
Eugene thrilled with satisfaction. Another Wednesday he said:--"A little
colder, my boy, a little colder. There's sex in that. It isn't in the
figure. You ought to make a good mural decorator some day, if you have
the inclination," Boyle went on; "you've got the sense of beauty." The
roots of Eugene's hair tingled. So art was coming to him. This man saw
his capacity. He really had art in him.

One evening a paper sign pasted up on the bulletin board bore the
significant legend: "Artists! Attention! We