People really do live in big, quaint, bare rooms with scarcely enough to buy the necessaries of life; and they are undoubtedly gay in the doing of it.

There is a sort of _camaraderie_ among the "Bohemians" of the world below Fourteenth Street which the more restricted uptowners find it hard to believe in.

It is difficult for those uptowners to understand a condition of mind which makes it possible for a number of ambitious young people in a studio building to go fireless and supperless one day and feast gloriously the next; to share their rare windfalls without thought of obligation on any side; to burn candles instead of kerosene in order to dine at "Polly's"; to borrow each other's last pennies for books or pictures or drawing materials, knowing that they will all go without butter or milk for tomorrow's breakfast.
If one is hard up, one expects to be offered a share in someone's good fortune; if one has had luck oneself, one expects, as a matter of course, to share it.

Such is the code of the studios.
Anabel, for example, is sitting up typing her newest poem at 1 A.M.when a knock comes on the studio door.

She opens it to confront the man who lives on the top floor and whom she has never met.