o see her in
her studio. She said that she particularly wanted to see me and had
something very important to say.

I obeyed the summons, of course. I found Mrs. Ascher clad in a long,
pale-blue pinafore. Over-all is, I believe, the proper name for the
garment. But it looked to me like a child's pinafore, greatly enlarged.
It completely covered all her other clothes in front and almost
completely covered them behind. I recognised it as the sort of thing a
really earnest artist would wear while working. Her hair was hanging
in loops and wisps about her head, a disorder which was effective with
dark-red hair. Her hands were damp and dirty. Her face was smudged here
and there, as if, in moments of artistic travail, she had pressed her
muddy fingers against her forehead and chin. The room had very little
furniture in it, but there were several tables, large and small. On
these stood what seemed to me shapeless lumps of various sizes, swathed
in damp rags. They reminded me a little of the shrouded objects on the
tables of dissecting rooms after the students have gone home. There was
the same suggestion of mutilated human forms. Mrs. Archer saw me looking
at them.

"Some of my little things," she said, "but nothing finished. I don't
know why it is, but here in New York I find it very difficult to finish
anything."

"You're not singular in that," I said. "The New York people themselves
suffer in exactly the same way. There isn't a street in their city that
they've finished or ever will finish. If anything begins to look
like completion they smash it up at once and start fresh. It must be
something in the air, a restlessness, a desire of the perfection which
can never be realised."

Mrs. Ascher very carefully unwrapped a succession of damp rags from one
of the largest of her lumps which was standing on a table by itself. I
have, since then, seen nurses unwrapping the bandages from the wounded
limbs of men. The way they did it always reminded me of Mrs. Ascher.
The removal of the last bandage revealed to me a figure about eighteen
inches high of a girl who seemed to me to be stretching herself after
getting out of bed before stepping into her bath.

"Psyche," said Mrs. Ascher.

I had to show my admiration in some way. The proper thing, I believe,
when shown a statue by a sculptor, is to stroke it with your fingers and
murmur, "Ah!" I was afraid to stroke Psyche because she was certainly
wet and probably soft. A touch migh