For his part he was pacing moodily down the street, with his hands in his pockets. Several times he swallowed a persistent lump in his throat. He could understand Helen's ambition, and her revolt against the conventions, but he could not understand her point of view. Even now, he would not admit that she was wholly lost to him. What she had said came back to him with convincing force: "When you dedicate your whole life to a thing, you simply must have it."
"We'll see," he said to himself grimly, "just how true her theory is."
Months passed, and Helen worked hard. She was busy as many trusting souls have been before with "The Great American Novel." She was putting into it all of her brief experience and all of her untried philosophy of life. She was writing of suffering she had never felt, and of love she could not understand.
She saw Frank now and then, at studio teas and semi-Bohemian gatherings, at which the newspaper men were always a welcome feature. There was no trace of the lover in his manner, and she began to doubt his sincerity, as is the way with women.
"So this is Bohemia?" he asked one evening when they met in a studio in the same building as Helen's den.
"Yes,—why not?"
"I was thinking it must be a pretty poor place if this is a fair sample of the inhabitants," he returned easily.
She flushed angrily. "I do not see why you should think so. Here are authors, musicians, poets, painters and playwrights—could one be in better company?"
"So this is Bohemia?" he asked one evening when they met in a studio in the same building as Helen's den.
From the Drawing by Dalton Stevens