bner's_ and the _Century_, as
getting into those publications was called, and after a time he
succeeded in making an impression on their respective Art Directors,
though no notable commissions were given him. From one he secured a
poem, rather out of his mood to decorate, and from the other a short
story; but somehow he could not feel that either was a real opportunity.
He wanted an appropriate subject or to sell them some of his scenes.

Building up a paying reputation was slow work. Although he was being
mentioned here and there among artists, his name was anything but a
significant factor with the public or with the Art Directors. He was
still a promising beginner--growing, but not yet arrived by a long
distance.

There was one editor who was inclined to see him at his real worth, but
had no money to offer. This was Richard Wheeler, editor of _Craft_, a
rather hopeless magazine in a commercial sense, but devoted sincerely
enough to art. Wheeler was a blond young man of poetic temperament,
whose enthusiasm for Eugene's work made it easy for them to become
friends.

It was through Wheeler that he met that winter Miriam Finch and
Christina Channing, two women of radically different temperaments and
professions, who opened for Eugene two entirely new worlds.

Miriam Finch was a sculptor by profession--a critic by temperament, with
no great capacity for emotion in herself but an intense appreciation of
its significance in others. To see her was to be immediately impressed
with a vital force in womanhood. She was a woman who had never had a
real youth or a real love affair, but clung to her ideal of both with a
passionate, almost fatuous, faith that they could still be brought to
pass. Wheeler had invited him to go round to her studio with him one
evening. He was interested to know what Eugene would think of her.
Miriam, already thirty-two when Eugene met her--a tiny, brown haired,
brown eyed girl, with a slender, rather cat-like figure and a suavity of
address and manner which was artistic to the finger tips. She had none
of that budding beauty that is the glory of eighteen, but she was
altogether artistic and delightful. Her hair encircled her head in a
fluffy cloudy mass; her eyes moved quickly, with intense intelligence,
feeling, humor, sympathy. Her lips were sweetly modelled after the
pattern of a Cupid's bow and her smile was subtly ingratiating. Her
sallow complexion matched her brown hair and the drab velvet o