to diverge slightly from that of her mother and then trouble
began.

It was vague at first, hardly a definite, tangible thing in the
daughter's mind, but later it grew to be a definite feeling that her
life was being cramped. She had been warned off from association with
this person and that; had been shown the pitfalls that surround the
free, untrammelled life of the art studio. Marriage with the average
artist was not to be considered. Modelling from the nude, particularly
the nude of a man, was to her mother at first most distressing. She
insisted on being present and for a long time her daughter thought that
was all right. Finally the presence, the viewpoint, the intellectual
insistence of her mother, became too irksome, and an open break
followed. It was one of those family tragedies which almost kill
conservative parents. Mrs. Finch's heart was practically broken.

The trouble with this break was that it came a little too late for
Miriam's happiness. In the stress of this insistent chaperonage she had
lost her youth--the period during which she felt she should have had her
natural freedom. She had lost the interest of several men who in her
nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first years had approached her
longingly, but who could not stand the criticism of her mother. At
twenty-eight when the break came the most delightful love period was
over and she felt grieved and resentful.

At that time she had insisted on a complete and radical change for
herself. She had managed to get, through one art dealer and another,
orders for some of her spirited clay figurines. There was a dancing
girl, a visualization of one of the moods of Carmencita, a celebrated
dancer of the period, which had caught the public fancy--at least the
particular art dealer who was handling her work for her had managed to
sell some eighteen replicas of it at $175 each. Miss Finch's share of
this was $100, each. There was another little thing, a six-inch bronze
called "Sleep," which had sold some twenty replicas at $150 each, and
was still selling. "The Wind," a figure crouching and huddling as if
from cold, was also selling. It looked as though she might be able to
make from three to four thousand dollars a year steadily.

She demanded of her mother at this time the right to a private studio,
to go and come when she pleased, to go about alone wherever she wished,
to have men and women come to her private apartment, and be entertained
by her in he