Page 25 (1/1)

Talking rapidly to mask embarrassment, they joined us round the fire, Reid dropped a slouch hat and an overcoat that see with papers, while Miss Bryant and Kitty began a rapid fire of talk about "copy," "cuts," "the black," "the colour" and other ot e," said Kitty finally; "if they hurry the etching again, before my poor dear little bears have been half an hour on the presses, they'll fill with ink and print gray I'll--I'll leave ravers"

"Oh, don't fret," said Miss Bryant "Magazine'll look well this week Big Toot in soht," Kitty sighed; "but--oh, those etchers and----Yes, Big To the Art Department, like the editor before last, to sketch a one-colu a cup of cream"

"How could anybody do that?" cried Helen

"Just what the artist said"

Miss Bryant looked slightly older than Helen; in spite of her brusque, careless sentences, I suspected that she was a girl of soth of will And suspicion grew to certainty that she and Reid were lovers

I ht have read it in his tone when in the course of the evening he asked her to sing

"Then giveup a newspaper and seizing a bit of charcoal fro suddenly into an air which she rendered with dramatic expression as rare as her abandon

"Applaud! Applaud!" she cried, clapping her own hands at the end of a brilliant passage, her colourless, irregular face alive with enthusias "If you don't applaud, how do you expect ? Vos plaudite!"

"I'll applaud when you've surely stopped," said Kitty Reid derand opera, I want you to hear the Princess Helen, you know you pro at the title, "I can't sing before Cadge; but if you like, I'll play for you See if I' in the old days, so that I was not surprised at her refusal Taking her mandolin, she tinkled an air that I have often heard her play, but neither I nor any one else had ears for it, so absorbed was the sense of sight

Her long lashes swept her cheeks as she bent forward in the firelight, her vivid colouring subdued by the soft, playing glow to an elusive charer life, her beauty seerow fuller and to have an oriental softness and warrayer, fainter radiance, her perfect grace of classic outlineto life, reat loveliness delicately spiritualized