"I ventured to make an appointment," she said. "They only show it by special permission of the owners, the Peter Y. Satterlee Company. Mr. Satterlee himself offered to be at the building at twelve o'clock to-morrow, if that hour will suit. To deal with him in person would be an advantage."
"Would it?" responded Craig, hazily. "Very well. Can you go, Jean?"
"If you want me," she returned, feeling outside the discussion.
"Of course. I count on you and Julie to browbeat the real-estate shark into reducing the summer's rent. All I shall be good for is to tell you whether there is a practicable north light."
Jean came late. Richter had abruptly taken her off the spirit-mortifying antique to aid him with one of his lesser studies for the Western exposition, and the forenoon had been absorbing. To watch Richter model was much; to help him a heaven-sent boon to be exercised in fear and trembling and exceeding joy. The stroke of twelve, which should have found her with Craig, saw her but leaving Richter's door. The distance was short, however, and at a quarter past the hour the overupholstered elevator of the Copley Studios bore her without vulgar haste aloft.
It was all vastly different from Craig's unfashionable top-story back, a mile or more down-town. No shabby street confronted this temple of the fine arts; its benign façade overlooked a trim park and the vehicles of elegant leisure. No base odor of cabbage or garlic rose from the nether lair of its janitor; no plebeian tailor or dressmaker debased the tone of its lower floors. Its courts were of marble, and its flunkies had supple spines.
The door to which Jean was directed stood ajar, and she let herself in to encounter other mighty differences. The entrance to the down-town studio precipitated the caller squarely into the travail of artistic production, but the architect who planned the Copley Studios had interposed a little hall with a stained-glass window-nook and a reception-room of creamy empire fittings between genius and its interruptions.
From the studio proper issued Julie's level tones, presumably in discussion with Peter Y. Satterlee, for Jean heard Craig's meditative whistle in another direction. Following a small passage, she came upon him studying the convolutions of a nervous jet of steam which found vent among the myriad chimneys of the nearer outlook.
"Will it do?" she smiled.
"Splendidly—almost too splendidly. Julie and the magnificent Satterlee are settling terms, I believe. Behold your studio, sculptress mine!" he added with a grandiloquent gesture. "This is the extra chamber of Julie's rhapsodies, otherwise a bachelor's bedroom about to be dedicated to nobler ends. Notice your view, Jean! New York, the Hudson, Jersey's hills, and the promise of sunsets beyond compare! And look here"—descending to practicality—"running water handy and my workshop next. We shall virtually work side by side."