M. Ripert was a painter personally known to one of Grover's professors at Harvard and recommended as a master "sympathetic with the modern movement but not carried away by it." To Grover this sounded rather depressingly like Harvard, but, like Harvard, it would do for a start. M. Ripert had a commodious studio but no telephone. "You had better call in the afternoon," the professor had added. "He paints in the mornings and doesn't like to be disturbed."
At three o'clock, therefore, on a Monday afternoon late in September, Grover emerged from the Nord-Sud subway station at the Rotonde and walked somewhat gingerly down the rue de la Grande Chaumière to the number indicated on his correct letter of introduction. There were obviously a number of studios in the building, but no names on the doors, Paris being a casual sort of city.
A businesslike young woman, seated at a small table in the entry, was writing names on cards and placing them in a file. Three or four students armed with portfolios not unlike his own stood about chatting in low tones. Grover stepped forward timidly; he hoped no one would get the impression that he overestimated the worth of the paltry sketches hidden under his arm, for no man had ever felt more humble than he was feeling at the moment, here at the portals of Art.
An inquiry, in studied phrases, was on the tip of his tongue, and he was all ready to get it off to the businesslike young woman, when she astonished him
