"Do I come too late?" asks Nita. "Has Monsieur Sylvain already been?"
"No," replied Sophie, "we are about to give him up. Will you have tea?"
Nita laughs. "Tea, and yet again tea! At home Miss Wilmot has already pursued me with offers of tea; that comes of it if one lives between an Englishwoman and a Russian. Well, give me a cup of your nectar, Sonia. I am a little out of tune to-day; perhaps it will do me good."
"You must wait a moment; if is not yet ready," replies Sonia, and bends listening over the copper tea-kettle, which stands on a little table delicately set with all kinds of tea things.
It is four o'clock in the afternoon. The last whitish light of an already quickly dying November day falls through a large window occupying almost one entire side of the studio, a roomy, square apartment, whose gray walls are adorned with a couple of studies, abundant bold sketches by Nita, anxiously neat attempts by Sophie; beside those, a plaster cast of St. John, bas reliefs of Donatello, with many bits of picturesque old stuffs, and two or three Japanese crapes. Furniture is scarce: a divan, over which an old Persian rug is spread; a couple of comfortable chairs, mostly of cane, but with a supplement of silken cushions; tables which bend under a weight of books, portfolios, plaster casts, and paint-boxes; many easels; a vase of withered chrysanthemums; in one corner a manikin with gracefully bent arms, in the other a skeleton, many old paint tubes--form the furnishings.
The door into the adjoining painting school stands half open. Idly waiting for the completion of Sophie's brewing, Nita glances in there.
Between a forest of easels she sees eight or ten women, who look weary, yawn; one of them smokes a cigarette, another nibbles at a biscuit; a third, her hat already on her head and veil over her eyes, makes a correction on her picture; while still another sits at a little piano, and with desperate energy drums the Saint Saens danse macabre.
The lady who is making yet another correction in her picture is the Countess d'Olbreuse, a butterfly of fashion, who not only raves over painting, but also has a great love for music.
"It is useless to wait longer for Sylvain," she remarks, laying aside her brushes and addressing the lady at the piano. "Apropos, have you procured tickets for Lensky's concert in Eden?"
"Not yet, and yet I have telephoned for twenty-four hours like a detective or a broker."