When nine o'clock rang from the church tower across the park she laid down her tools with an air of great content.
"I believe it's going to go," she announced to the absorbed pair of workers before her. "Wake up, Norn, and give me a criticism. Ju has to go to bed and can't hold the pose much longer anyway."
"Pooh, I'm not a bit tired," protested Judith. "I sit this way every night for _hours_."
Elinor laid down her brushes and turned in her chair. Her face lighted as she saw the rough, vigorous outlines of Patricia's latest effort.
"That's the real thing, Miss Pat!" she said enthusiastically. "If you can keep it up like that, you won't have to be ashamed of it, I can tell you!"
She came and stood behind Patricia, her hands on her shoulders, eager and interested.
"That shoulder is a little too high, and the head needs more fullness at the top--Ju has lots of hair--but it's going along splendidly, _splendidly_! Don't touch it again till Judith poses tomorrow. You want to keep close to life and not make up anything."
Patricia, meek in experience of past failure, covered her work and put it safely away.
"I'll go on with it when I'm rested and Judy is fresh," she said contentedly. "If it goes on as rapidly as it has tonight, it will be ready to turn in at the end of the week. We have until Saturday night to put in our stuff, you know. You have to get yours in by noon, don't you?"
Elinor nodded. "But I shan't have any trouble finishing in time, I'm sure," she said with bright confidence. "I feel as though it were almost going to do itself."
The spare hours of the rest of that week were devoted to the prize designs, and both progressed so happily that their authors were filled with a greater measure of content as the days sped.
"I'm going to take mine in to the Academy to work on this afternoon while I wait for the night life," said Elinor on Thursday as they were leaving the breakfast room. "I want to see how it looks among the big casts and life studies. I'm afraid it won't show up very well among the real things, but it may help me to see its faults and remedy them while I still have time."
Patricia gazed approvingly at the dim, shadowy study of graceful figures grouped in attentive attitudes about a reader in a landscape of suggested loveliness that spoke to any observer with delicate symbolism.