"
"I'm looking about now for a vocal teacher for her. She may be too
young, but at least I want her voice tried. I--we think she has quite an
amazing range."
"Have you tried Trieste?"
"Oh, I haven't dared contemplate anyone so inaccessible as he."
Mrs. Daab turned her head.
"Gedney," she said, "couldn't you give her a note to Trieste?"
"Good!" he said, feeling for a card and scrawling across its face. "This
will pass you directly to his nibs."
"You couldn't have granted us a bigger favor," said Lilly, feeling her
face glow.
"Then you grant me one. Bring your little girl to my Fifty-ninth Street
studio. I want to paint her."
"Indeed I will!"
"When?"
"Saturday afternoon is our only time."
"Fine. To-day two weeks?"
"Yes."
They Were at Ninety-first Street now, and he saw them up to their door.
"Good-by," he said. "You're a great youngster, and you've picked a great
little mother for yourself. Mrs. Daab and I want you both at the
studio often."
Up in their room, they embraced, Zoe's arms tight about her mother's
neck.
"It's begun, Lilly, to be wonderful!"
"What?"
"Life!"
* * * * *
The Saturday afternoon following, in a brownstone house in West
Forty-sixth Street that was more like a museum of the storied loot of
many lands, Trieste himself opened the pair of Florentine doors,
originally unhinged from a campanile outside of Rome, of his very
private studio, without appointment, to the magic of Gedney Daab's
scrawled card.
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