At Columbus Circle she came up to the surface and walked quickly across to a certain somewhat shabby studio building. Usually she could not reach it quickly enough; but to-night she passed the door twice, and finally stepped into the shadow of another doorway to have it out with herself. She told herself that to-night was not different from any other Tuesday or Thursday night, and she was a fool to be so excited. But all day it had hung over her, a prescience that this was the most important hour of her life. She longed for it, and she dreaded it terribly. If it brought her disappointment it would be no ordinary disappointment; it would mean the death of something in her without which her life would become merely an existence—hope. To-night she realized that she had never really lost it—hope—and an undying belief in her own genius.
But to-night could kill them both, or it could turn them into strength and glory. She clenched her hands into the pockets of her old serge jacket and set her lips in their lines of endurance.
The coloured boy in the elevator smiled at her and eyed the sprig of lilac in her buttonhole. She had taken it from the supper table and completely forgotten it until this instant.
“Looks like summer’s comin’,” he drawled.
She held the flower out to him.
“For luck,” she smiled.
Then at the top floor she went on down the short hall to the door behind which every Tuesday and Thursday night she came to life.
With her hand on the knob, she heard voices within. She shrank back. So, already it was here, the life or death of her hope, waiting there beyond the door. She had expected to have a half hour to herself, to quiet in work this sickening tremor of her heart. Well, nothing for it now but to harden herself for whatever verdict those voices in there would soon utter. She threw her head back defiantly and opened the door.
Three men were in the high, bare studio, standing about a long table. They turned toward her at the sound of her entrance, and one of them, a tall, thin man of forty, with quiet eyes and a sensitive mouth, came quickly forward to meet her. But she looked past him toward the table on which stood ten or twelve little figures, some of them still mere lumps of clay. Not even in this moment could she keep her eyes from them, the objects into which she had poured herself in delight and in suffering.
The tall man, John Richmond, followed her glance with understanding.