out, Hedger followed her. Her
white skirt gleamed ahead of him as she sauntered about the Square. She
sat down behind the Garibaldi statue and opened a music book she carried.
She turned the leaves carelessly, and several times glanced in his
direction. He was on the point of going over to her, when she rose
quickly and looked up at the sky. A flock of pigeons had risen from
somewhere in the crowded Italian quarter to the south, and were wheeling
rapidly up through the morning air, soaring and dropping, scattering and
coming together, now grey, now white as silver, as they caught or
intercepted the sunlight. She put up her hand to shade her eyes and
followed them with a kind of defiant delight in her face.

Hedger came and stood beside her. "You've surely seen them before?"

"Oh, yes," she replied, still looking up. "I see them every day from my
windows. They always come home about five o'clock. Where do they live?"

"I don't know. Probably some Italian raises them for the market. They
were here long before I came, and I've been here four years."

"In that same gloomy room? Why didn't you take mine when it was vacant?"

"It isn't gloomy. That's the best light for painting."

"Oh, is it? I don't know anything about painting. I'd like to see your
pictures sometime. You have such a lot in there. Don't they get dusty,
piled up against the wall like that?"

"Not very. I'd be glad to show them to you. Is your name really Eden
Bower? I've seen your letters on the table."

"Well, it's the name I'm going to sing under. My father's name is Bowers,
but my friend Mr. Jones, a Chicago newspaper man who writes about music,
told me to drop the 's.' He's crazy about my voice."

Miss Bower didn't usually tell the whole story,--about anything. Her
first name, when she lived in Huntington, Illinois, was Edna, but Mr.
Jones had persuaded her to change it to one which he felt would be worthy
of her future. She was quick to take suggestions, though she told him she
"didn't see what was the matter with 'Edna.'"

She explained to Hedger that she was going to Paris to study. She was
waiting in New York for Chicago friends who were to take her over, but
who had been detained. "Did you study in Paris?" she asked.

"No, I've never been in Paris. But I was in the south of France all last
summer, studying with C----. He's the biggest man among the moderns,--at
least I think so."

Miss Bower sat down and made room for him on the bench. "D