"No," she answered, rising, "I do not want money."
She went slowly down the studio without further word, only turning back as she passed Bently's picture for which she had posed, and which had been brought for the meeting of the Pagans.
"You have seen," she said, "I am able to earn. I have learned much while I was bringing you that letter. Across the world is a long way. No; I have no need of money."
VII.
IN WAY OF TASTE.
Troilus and Cressida; iii.—3.
Grant Herman's studio, in which the Pagans met that night, was in its way no less unique than the company there gathered. It was a great, misshapen place, narrow, half a hundred feet long, and disproportionately high, with undressed brick walls and cement floor. The upper half of one of the end walls was taken up with large windows, before which were drawn dingy curtains. Here and there about the place were scattered modeling stands, water tanks mounted upon rude tripods, casts, and the usual lumber of a sculptor's studio; while upon the walls were stuck pictures, sketches, and reproductions in all sorts of capricious groupings.
In one corner a flight of stairs led to a gallery high up against the wall, over the rude railing of which looked the heads of a couple of legless statues. From this gallery the stairs continued to ascend until a door near the roof was reached, leading to unknown regions well up in the building behind which the studio had been built as an afterthought. On shelves were confusedly disposed dusty bits of bronze, plaster, coarse pottery and rare glass; things valueless and things beyond price standing in careless fellowship. A canvas of Corot looked down upon a grotesque, grimacing Japanese idol, a beautiful bronze reproduction of a vase by Michael Angelo stood shoulder to shoulder with a bean-pot full of tobacco; a crumpled cravat was thrown carelessly over the arm of a dancing faun, while a cluster of Barye's matchless animals were apparently making their way with great difficulty through a collection of pipes, broken modeling tools, faded flowers and loose papers. Every where it was evident that the studio of Herman differed from heaven in at least its first law.
Quite in keeping with the picturesque, richly stored room, was the group of men walking about the place or seated near the rough table upon which refreshments were placed. On this table were a couple of splendid punch-bowls of antique cut glass, which, if not full now, had unmistakable marks of having been so earlier in the evening. A coarse dish of yellow earthen ware beside them held an ample supply of biscuits, and was in turn flanked by a couple of plates of cheese. Fruit, beer, and tobacco in various forms, with abundant glasses and pipes, completed the furnishing of the board, upon which a newspaper supplied the place of a cloth.
Tom Bently's long, shapely limbs were disposed in a big easy-chair by the table, his tongue being just now employed in one of his not infrequent harangues upon art, his remarks being plentifully spiced with profanity.
"Whatever crazy ideas on art," Bently was saying, "aren't good for any thing else have to be put into a book. The surest recommendation in art circles is getting out a book or giving a rubbishy lecture. Every woman who has painted a few bunches of flowers or daubed a little pottery, writes a book to tell how she did it; as if it were the most astonishing thing in the world."