"This is the chair of the muses, Mrs. Faversham, and not one of them has been good enough to sit in it before now."
She laughed and sat down, and Fairfax looked at her with joy.
"We must give Mrs. Faversham some tea," said Dearborn, "and if you will excuse me while we wait for Potowski, I will pop out and get some milk and you boil the tea-kettle."
He took his hat and cape and ran out, leaving them alone.
Mrs. Faversham looked at the sculptor in his velveteen working clothes, the background of his workshop, its disorder and its poverty around him.
"How nice it is here," she said. "I don't wonder you are a hermit."
"Oh," he exclaimed, "don't compliment this desolation."
She interrupted him. "I think it is charming. You feel the atmosphere of living and of work. You seem to see things here that are not visible in rooms where nothing is accomplished."
He sat down beside her. "Are there such rooms?" he asked. "I don't believe it. The most thrilling dramas take place, don't they, in the most commonplace settings?"
As though she feared that Dearborn would come back, she said quickly—