room, subsided into an arm-chair, and, while at the interminable task
of unbuttoning her elbow gloves, gave oral testimony as to the

demerits of the "show."
"Yes, I think Mr. Fields is really amusing--sometimes," said Barbara.

"Here is a letter for you, dear, that came by special delivery just
after you had gone."

"Who is it from?" asked Nevada, tugging at a button.
"Well, really," said Barbara, with a smile, "I can only guess. The

envelope has that queer little thing in one corner that Gilbert calls
a palette, but which looks to me rather like a gilt heart on a school-

girl's valentine."
"I wonder what he's writing to me about" remarked Nevada, listlessly.

"We're all alike," said Barbara; "all women. We try to find out what
is in a letter by studying the postmark. As a last resort we use

scissors, and read it from the bottom upward. Here it is."
She made a motion as if to toss the letter across the table to Nevada.

"Great catamounts!" exclaimed Nevada. "These centre-fire buttons are
a nuisance. I'd rather wear buckskins. Oh, Barbara, please shuck the

hide off that letter and read it. It'll be midnight before I get
these gloves off!"

"Why, dear, you don't want me to open Gilbert's letter to you? It's
for you, and you wouldn't wish any one else to read it, of course!"

Nevada raised her steady, calm, sapphire eyes from her gloves.
"Nobody writes me anything that everybody mightn't read," she said.

"Go on, Barbara. Maybe Gilbert wants us to go out in his car again
to-morrow."

Curiosity can do more things than kill a cat; and if emotions, well
recognized as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealousy

would soon leave the whole world catless. Barbara opened the letter,
with an indulgent, slightly bored air.

"Well, dear," said she, "I'll read it if you want me to."
She slit the envelope, and read the missive with swift-travelling

eyes; read it again, and cast a quick, shrewd glance at Nevada, who,
for the time, seemed to consider gloves as the world of her interest,

and letters from rising artists as no more than messages from Mars.
For a quarter of a minute Barbara looked at Nevada with a strange

steadfastness; and then a smile so small that it widened her mouth
only the sixteenth part of an inch, and narrowed her eyes no more than

a twentieth, flashed like an inspired thought across her face.
Since the beginning no woman has been a mystery to another woman

Swift as light travels, each penetrates the heart and mind of another,
sifts her sister's words of their cunningest disguises, reads her most

hidden desires, and plucks the sophistry from her wiliest talk like
hairs from a comb, twiddling them sardonically between her thumb and

fingers before letting them float away on the breezes of fundamental
doubt. Long ago Eve's son rang the door-bell of the family residence

in Paradise Park, bearing a strange lady on his arm, whom he
introduced. Eve took her daughter-in-law aside and lifted a classic

eyebrow.
"The Land of Nod," said the bride, languidly flirting the leaf of a

palm. ''I suppose you've been there, of course?"
"Not lately," said Eve, absolutely unstaggered. "Don't you think the

apple-sauce they serve over there is execrable? I rather like that
mulberry-leaf tunic effect, dear; but, of course, the real fig goods

are not to be had over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while
the gentlemen split a celery tonic. I think the caterpillar-holes

have made your dress open a little in the back."
So, then and there--according to the records--was the alliance formed

by the only two who's-who ladies in the world. Then it was agreed
that woman should forever remain as clear as a pane of glass-though

glass was yet to be discovered-to other women, and that she should
palm herself off on man as a mystery.

Barbara seemed to hesitate.
"Really, Nevada," she said, with a little show of embarrassment, "you

shouldn't have insisted on my opening this. I-I'm sure it wasn't
meant for any one else to know."

Nevada forgot her gloves for a moment.
"Then read it aloud," she said. "Since you've already read it, what's

the difference? If Mr. Warren has written to me something that any
one else oughtn't to know, that is all the more reason why everybody

should know it."
"Well," said Barbara, "this is what it says:

'Dearest Nevada--Come to my studio at twelve o'clock to-night. Do not
fail.'" Barbara rose and dropped the note in Nevada's lap. "I'm

awfully sorry," she said, "that I knew. It isn't like Gilbert. There
must be some mistake. Just consider that I am ignorant of it, will

you, dear? I must go up-stairs now, I have such a headache. I'm sure
I don't understand the note. Perhaps Gilbert has been dining too

well, and will explain. Good night!"
IV

Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara's door close upstairs.
The bronze clock in the study told the hour of twelve was fifteen

minutes away. She ran swiftly to the front door, and let herself out
into the snow-storm. Gilbert Warren's studio was six squares away.

By aerial ferry the white, silent forces of the storm attacked the
city from beyond the sullen East River. Already the snow lay a foot

deep on the pavements, the drifts heaping themselves like scaling-
ladders against the walls of the besieged town. The Avenue was as

quiet as a street in Pompeii. Cabs now and then skimmed past like
white-winged gulls over a moonlit ocean; and less frequent motor-cars-

-sustaining the comparison--hissed through the foaming waves like
submarine boats on their jocund, perilous journeys.

Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on her way. She looked
up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the

streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray,
drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so like the

wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such
as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her.

A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by his eye and
weight.

"Hello, Mabel!" said he. "Kind of late for you to be out, ain't it?"
"I--I am just going to the drug store," said Nevada, hurrying past

him.
The excuse serves as a passport for the most sophisticated. Does it

prove that woman never progresses, or that she sprang from Adam's rib,
full-fledged in intellect and wiles?

Turning eastward, the direct blast cut down Nevada's speed one-half.
She made zigzag tracks in the snow; but she was as tough as a pinon

sapling, and bowed to it as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building
loomed before her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some well-

remembered canon. The haunt of business and its hostile neighbor,
art, was darkened and silent. The elevator stopped at ten.

Up eight flights of Stygian stairs Nevada climbed, and rapped firmly
at the door numbered "89." She had been there many times before, with

Barbara and Uncle Jerome.
Gilbert opened the door. He had a crayon pencil in one hand, a green

shade over his eyes, and a pipe in his mouth. The pipe dropped to the
floor.

"Am I late?" asked Nevada. "I came as quick as I could. Uncle and me
were at the theatre this evening. Here I am, Gilbert!"

Gilbert did a Pygmalion-and-Galatea act. He changed from a statue of
stupefaction to a young man with a problem to tackle. He admitted

Nevada, got a whiskbroom, and began to brush the snow from her
clothes. A great lamp, with a green shade, hung over an easel, where

the artist had been sketching in crayon.