She craved a fuller knowledge, however, than these mute witnesses could give, and the desire presently drew her back into the high-vaulted chamber where the library's activities seemed to focus; and here, bewildered by the riches of the card catalogue, she was luckily seen by the quiet old man who lent his dignity to the head of Mrs. St. Aubyn's table. He smiled gently upon her over his spectacles, pondering the motive behind her request as he had speculated about the motives of thousands before her, and instantly, out of a head whose store she felt that she had scantily appreciated, produced half a dozen likely references which he straightway bade a precocious small boy to track to their fastnesses in some mysterious region he called the stacks; himself, meanwhile, with a faded gallantry, escorting her to a desk in a scholarly retreat where only feminine glances questioned her coming.
So ensconced, she came upon the facts she sought in a bound volume of a journal devoted chiefly to the fine arts. She learned here that her knight errant's full name was Francis Craig Atwood, that New York claimed the honor of his birthplace, and that he was a trifle less than ten years older than herself. There followed a list of his schools, which ended with Julien's Academy in Paris, where it appeared he had gone the autumn after their meeting, and had exhibited canvases at the Salons of two successive years. His return to America and his instant recognition coincided closely with her own coming to New York. The concluding analysis of his work bristled with technicalities, but she read into it the qualities which she perceived or imagined in the man, and, staring into the dusty alcove over against her seat, lost herself in a brown study of what such success as this probably meant to him. Newspaper paragraphs about his comings and goings, she supposed, many sketches like this under her hand, social opportunities of course, the flattery of women, friendships with the clever and the rich. It rather daunted her to find him a celebrity, and at this pass nothing could have so routed her self-possession as to discover that a man, of whose nearness at an adjacent bookcase she had been vaguely aware, was no other than Atwood himself.
"Thank you," he laughed, with a wave of the hand toward the telltale page. "But there's better reading in the library."
Jean clapped to the offending volume and blushed her guiltiest.
"You must think me very silly," she stammered. "Mr. MacGregor praised your work, showed me the portrait—"
"Of course he did. You have discovered Mac's weakness and his dangerous charm. He believes all his friends are geniuses. You'll grow as conceited as the rest of us in time."
"And have the other conceited friends done work like yours and said nothing about it?" she asked.
"A thousand times better. You've no idea what a clever lot of men and women Mac knows." He rapidly instanced several artists, sculptors, and writers of prominence, adding: "But you will see them all at The Oasis sooner or later. You've probably noticed that Mac is one of those rareties who can talk while they work. What would hinder most people, only stimulates him. And it stimulates the other fellow, too. I always drop in on him for a tonic when my own stuff lags. I was there this afternoon, in fact, though for another reason. I wanted to see you. It must have been telepathy that brought me down here; I thought it was 'The Gadzooks'!"
"'The Gadzooks,'" she puzzled.
"Merely my slang for the Revolutionary romance," he explained. "I'm illustrating still another one, and ran in here to resolve my doubts about bag-wigs. My novelist seems to have invented a new variety. But about you: if you don't mind the weather, and have nothing better to do, I should like to take you over to a Fifth Avenue picture dealer's to see a so-called Velasquez that's come into the market."