"Is Mr. Vance in?" she said somewhat breathlessly.

She seemed to have been hurrying, and the hat was a little on one side.

Pollyooly eyed her with some disfavour, and said coldly: "No, he isn't."

"Will he be in soon?" said Flossie anxiously.

"I don't know," said Pollyooly yet more coldly.

Flossie gazed up and down the street with a helpless air; then she said:

"Then I'd better come In and write a note for him and leave it." And she walked down the passage and into the studio.

Still wearing an air of disapproval, Pollyooly found paper and pencil for her; and she sat down and began to write. She wrote a few words, stopped, and bit the end of the pencil.

"It's dreadful when gentlemen will quarrel about you," she said in a tone and with an air in which gratified vanity forced itself firmly through the affectation of distress.

"What gentlemen?" said Pollyooly.