IN JOYCE'S STUDIO The short winter day was almost at an end.

High up in the top flat of a New York apartment house, Joyce Ware sat in her studio, making the most of those last few moments of daylight.

In the downstairs flats the electric lights were already on.

She moved her easel nearer the window, thankful that no sky-scraper loomed between it and the fading sunset, for she needed a full half hour to complete her work.
There were a number of good pictures on the walls, among them some really fine old Dutch interiors, but any artist would have turned from the best of them to study the picture silhouetted against the western window.

The girlish figure enveloped in a long loose working apron was all in shadow, but the light, slanting across the graceful head bending towards the easel, touched the brown hair with glints of gold, and gave the profile of the earnest young face, the distinctive effect of a Rembrandt portrait.
Wholly unconscious of the fact, Joyce plied her brush with capable practised fingers, so absorbed in her task that she heard nothing of the clang and roar of the streets below, seething with holiday traffic.