"Why, how splendid!" Miss Platt was ready now to depart. "How clever he must be to write a novel! All those conversations they put in! I'm sure I don't know where they get it all from. What a gift! Mind you bring him to see me, dear, as soon as ever you can."
"I will," said Millie.
"I do love to have literary and artistic people round me. We do have quite delightful musical parties here sometimes. And dances too. Do you dance?"
"I love it," said Millie.
"That's splendid. Now come along. We'll go downstairs and start the morning's work."
The drawing-room was just such a place as Millie had expected, a perfect menagerie of odds and ends of furniture and the walls covered with pictures ranging from the most sentimental of Victorian to the most symbolic and puzzling of Cubists. But what a nice room this could be did it contain less! Wide, high windows welcomed the sun and a small room off the larger one could have the most charming privacy and cosiness. But the smaller room was at the moment blocked with a huge roller-top desk and a great white statue of a naked woman holding an apple and peering at it as though she were expecting it to turn into something strange like a baby or a wild fowl at the earliest possible moment. This statue curved in such a way that it seemed to hang above the roller-top desk in an inquiring attitude. It was the chilliest-looking statue Millie had ever seen.
"Yes," said Miss Platt, seeing that Millicent's eyes were directed towards this, "that is the work of a very rising young sculptor, an American, Ephraim Block. You'll see him soon; he often comes to luncheon here. I do love to encourage the newer art, and Mr. Block is one of the very newest."
"What is the subject?" asked Millie.
"Eve and the Apple," said Miss Platt. "It was originally intended that there should be a Tree and a Serpent as well, but Mr. Block very wisely saw that very few Art Galleries would be large enough for a tree such as he had designed, so they are to come later when he has some open-air commissions. He is a very agreeable young man; you'll like him I'm sure. Some of my friends think the statue a little bold, but after all in the service of art we must forget our small pruderies, must we not? Others see a resemblance in Eve to myself, and Mr. Block confessed that he had me a little in mind when he made his design. Poor man, he has a wife and children, and life is a great struggle for him, I'm afraid. These Americans will marry so young. Now this," she went on, turning to the roller-top desk, "is where I keep my papers, and one of the very first things I want you to do is to get them into something like order.
"They are in a perfect mess at present and I never can find anything when I want it. I thought you might begin on that at once. I have to go out for an hour or two to see a friend off to America. What she's going to America for I can't imagine. She's such a nice woman with two dear little boys, but she had a sudden passion to see Chicago and nothing could keep her. I shall be back by twelve, and if there's anything you want just ring the bell by the fireplace there and Beppo will attend to you."