The Common Law

Robert William Chambers

Chapter 1

 

There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door. He continued working. After an interval the bell rang again, briefly, as though the light touch on the electric button had lost its assurance.

"Somebody's confidence has departed," he thought to himself, busy with a lead-weighted string and a stick of soft charcoal wrapped in silver foil. For a few moments he continued working, not inclined to trouble himself to answer the door, but the hesitating timidity of a third appeal amused him, and he walked out into the hallway and opened the door. In the dim light a departing figure turned from the stairway:

"Do you wish a model?" she asked in an unsteady voice.

"No," he said, vexed.

"Then—I beg your pardon for disturbing you—"

"Who gave you my name?" he demanded.

"Why—nobody—"

"Who sent you to me? Didn't anybody send you?"

"No."

"But how did you get in?"

"I—walked in."

There was a scarcely perceptible pause; then she turned away in the dim light of the corridor.

"You know," he said, "models are not supposed to come here unless sent for. It isn't done in this building." He pointed to a black and white sign on his door which bore the words: "No Admittance."

"I am very sorry. I didn't understand—"

"Oh, it's all right; only, I don't see how you got up here at all. Didn't the elevator boy question you? It's his business."

"I didn't come up on the elevator."

"You didn't walk up!"

"Yes."

"Twelve stories!"

"Both elevators happened to be in service. Besides, I was not quite certain that models were expected to use the elevators."

"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "you must have wanted an engagement pretty badly."

"Yes, I did."

He stared: "I suppose you do, still,"

"If you would care to try me."

"I'll take your name and address, anyhow. Twelve flights! For the love of—oh, come in anyway and rest."

It was dusky in the private hallway through which he preceded her, but there was light enough in the great studio. Through the vast sheets of glass fleecy clouds showed blue sky between. The morning was clearing.

He went over to an ornate Louis XV table, picked up a note book, motioned her to be seated, dropped into a chair himself, and began to sharpen a pencil. As yet he had scarcely glanced at her, and now, while he leisurely shaved the cedar and scraped the lead to a point, he absent-mindedly and good-humouredly admonished her:

"You models have your own guild, your club, your regular routine, and it would make it much easier for us if you'd all register and quietly wait until we send for you.

"You see we painters know what we want and we know where to apply for it. But if you all go wandering over studio buildings in search of engagements, we won't have any leisure to employ you because it will take all our time to answer the bell. And it will end by our not answering it at all. And that's why it is fit and proper for good little models to remain chez eux."

He had achieved a point to his pencil. Now he opened his model book, looked up at her with his absent smile, and remained looking.

"Aren't you going to remove your veil?"

"Oh—I beg your pardon!" Slender gloved fingers flew up, were nervously busy a moment. She removed her veil and sat as though awaiting his comment. None came.

After a moment's pause she said: "Did you wish—my name and address?"

He nodded, still looking intently at her.

"Miss West," she said, calmly. He wrote it down.

"Is that all? Just 'Miss West'?"

"Valerie West—if that is custom—necessary."

He wrote "Valerie West"; and, as she gave it to him, he noted her address.

"Head and shoulders?" he asked, quietly.

"Yes," very confidently.

"Figure?"

"Yes,"—less confidently.

"Draped or undraped?"

When he looked up again, for an instant he thought her skin even whiter than it had been; perhaps not, for, except the vivid lips and a carnation tint in the cheeks, the snowy beauty of her face and neck had already preoccupied him.

"Do you pose undraped?" he repeated, interested.

"I—expect to do—what is—required of—models."

"Sensible," he commented, noting the detail in his book. "Now, Miss West, for whom have you recently posed?"

And, as she made no reply, he looked up amiably, balancing his pencil in his hand and repeating the question.

"Is it necessary to—tell you?"

"Not at all. One usually asks that question, probably because you models are always so everlastingly anxious to tell us—particularly when the men for whom you have posed are more famous than the poor devil who offers you an engagement."

There was something very good humoured in his smile, and she strove to smile, too, but her calmness was now all forced, and her heart was beating very fast, and her black-gloved fingers were closing and doubling till the hands that rested on the arms of the gilded antique chair lay tightly clenched.

He was leisurely writing in his note book under her name:

"Height, medium; eyes, a dark brown; hair, thick, lustrous, and brown; head, unusually beautiful; throat and neck, perfect—"

He stopped writing and lifted his eyes:

"How much of your time is taken ahead, I wonder?"

"What?"

"How many engagements have you? Is your time all cut up—as I fancy it is?"

"N-no."

"Could you give me what time I might require?"

"I think so."

"What I mean, Miss West, is this: suppose that your figure is what I have an idea it is; could you give me a lot of time ahead?"

She remained silent so long that he had started to write, "probably unreliable," under his notes; but, as his pencil began to move, her lips unclosed with, a low, breathless sound that became a ghost of a voice:

"I will do what you require of me. I meant to answer."

"Do you mean that you are in a position to make a time contract with me?—provided you prove to be what I need?"

She nodded uncertainly.

"I'm beginning the ceiling, lunettes, and panels for the Byzantine Theatre," he added, sternly stroking his short mustache, "and under those circumstances I suppose you know what a contract between us means."

She nodded again, but in her eyes was bewilderment, and in her heart, fear.

"Yes," she managed to say, "I think I understand."

"Very well. I merely want to say that a model threw me down hard in the very middle of the Bimmington's ball-room. Max Schindler put on a show, and she put for the spot-light. She'd better stay put," he added grimly: "she'll never have another chance in your guild."

Then the frown vanished, and the exceedingly engaging smile glimmered in his eyes:

"You wouldn't do such a thing as that to me," he added; "would you, Miss West?"

"Oh, no," she replied, not clearly comprehending the enormity of the Schindler recruit's behaviour.

"And you'll stand by me if our engagement goes through?"

"Yes, I—will try to."

"Good business! Now, if you really are what I have an idea you are, I'll know pretty quick whether I can use you for the Byzantine job." He rose, walked over to a pair of closed folding doors and opened them. "You can undress in there," he said. "I think you will find everything you need."

For a second she sat rigid, her black-gloved hands doubled, her eyes fastened on him as though fascinated. He had already turned and sauntered over to one of several easels where he picked up the lump of charcoal in its silver foil.

The colour began to come back into her face—swifter, more swiftly: the vast blank window with its amber curtains stared at her; she lifted her tragic gaze and saw the sheet of glass above swimming in crystal light. Through it clouds were dissolving in the bluest of skies; against it a spiderweb of pendant cords drooped from the high ceiling; and she saw the looming mystery of huge canvases beside which stepladders rose surmounted by little crow's-nests where the graceful oval of palettes curved, tinted with scraped brilliancy.

"What a dreamer you are!" he called across the studio to her. "The light is fine, now. Hadn't we better take advantage of it?"

She managed to find her footing; contrived to rise, to move with apparent self-possession toward the folding doors.

"Better hurry," he said, pleasantly. "If you're what I need we might start things now. I am all ready for the sort of figure I expect you have."

She stepped inside the room and became desperately busy for a moment trying to close the doors; but either her hands had suddenly become powerless or they shook too much; and when he turned, almost impatiently, from his easel to see what all that rattling meant, she shrank hastily aside into the room beyond, keeping out of his view.

The room was charming—not like the studio, but modern and fresh and dainty with chintz and flowered wall-paper and the graceful white furniture of a bed-room. There was a flowered screen there, too. Behind it stood a chair, and onto this she sank, laid her hands for an instant against her burning face, then stooped and, scarcely knowing what she was about, began to untie her patent-leather shoes.

He remained standing at his easel, very busy with his string and lump of charcoal; but after a while it occurred to him that she was taking an annoyingly long time about a simple matter.

"What on earth is the trouble?" he called. "Do you realise you've been in there a quarter of an hour?"

She made no answer. A second later he thought he heard an indistinct sound—and it disquieted him.

"Miss West?"

There was no reply.

Impatient, a little disturbed, he walked across to the folding doors; and the same low, suppressed sound caught his ear.

"What in the name of—" he began, walking into the room; and halted, amazed.

She sat all huddled together behind the screen, partly undressed, her face hidden in her hands; and between the slender fingers tears ran down brightly.

"Are you ill?" he asked, anxiously.

After a moment she slowly shook her head.

"Then—what in the name of Mike—"

"P-please forgive me. I—I will be ready in a in-moment—if you wouldn't mind going out—"

"Are you ill? Answer me?"

"N-no."

"Has anything disturbed you so that you don't feel up to posing to-day?"

"No… . I—am—almost ready—if you will go out—"

He considered her, uneasy and perplexed. Then:

"All right," he said, briefly. "Take your own time, Miss West."

At his easel, fussing with yard-stick and crayon, he began to square off his canvas, muttering to himself:

"What the deuce is the matter with that girl? Nice moment to nurse secret sorrows or blighted affections. There's always something wrong with the best lookers… . And she is a real beauty—or I miss my guess." He went on ruling off, measuring, grumbling, until slowly there came over him the sense of the nearness of another person. He had not heard her enter, but he turned around, knowing she was there.

She stood silent, motionless, as though motion terrified her and inertia were salvation. Her dark hair rippled to her waist; her white arms hung limp, yet the fingers had curled till every delicate nail was pressed deep into the pink palm. She was trying to look at him. Her face was as white as a flower.

"All right," he said under his breath, "you're practically faultless. I suppose you realise it!"

A scarcely perceptible shiver passed over her entire body, then, as he stepped back, his keen artist's gaze narrowing, there stole over her a delicate flush, faintly staining her from brow to ankle, transfiguring the pallour exquisitely, enchantingly. And her small head drooped forward, shadowed by her hair.

"You're what I want," he said. "You're about everything I require in colour and form and texture."

She neither spoke nor moved as much as an eyelash.

"Look here, Miss West," he said in a slightly excited voice, "let's go about this thing intelligently." He swung another easel on its rollers, displaying a sketch in soft, brilliant colours—a multitude of figures amid a swirl of sunset-tinted clouds and patches of azure sky.

"You're intelligent," he went on with animation,—"I saw that—somehow or other—though you haven't said very much." He laughed, and laid his hand on the painted canvas beside him:

"You're a model, and it's not necessary to inform you that this Is only a preliminary sketch. Your experience tells you that. But it is necessary to tell you that it's the final composition. I've decided on this arrangement for the ceiling: You see for yourself that you're perfectly fitted to stand or sit for all these floating, drifting, cloud-cradled goddesses. You're an inspiration in yourself—for the perfections of Olympus!" he added, laughing, "and that's no idle compliment. But of course other artists have often told you this before—as though you didn't have eyes of your own I And beautiful ones at that!" He laughed again, turned and dragged a two-storied model-stand across the floor, tossed up one or two silk cushions, and nodded to her.

"Don't be afraid; it's rickety but safe. It will hold us both. Are you ready?"

As in a dream she set one little bare foot on the steps, mounted, balancing with arms extended and the tips of her fingers resting on his outstretched hand.

Standing on the steps he arranged the cushions, told her where to be seated, how to recline, placed the wedges and blocks to support her feet, chalked the bases, marked positions with arrows, and wedged and blocked up her elbow. Then he threw over her a soft, white, wool robe, swathing her from throat to feet, descended the steps, touched an electric bell, and picking up a huge clean palette began to squeeze out coils of colour from a dozen plump tubes.

Presently a short, squarely built man entered. He wore a blue jumper; there were traces of paint on it, on his large square hands, on his square, serious face.

"O'Hara?"

"Sorr?"

"We're going to begin now!—thank Heaven. So if you'll be kind enough to help move forward the ceiling canvas—"

O'Hara glanced up carelessly at the swathed and motionless figure above, then calmly spat upon his hands and laid hold of one side of the huge canvas indicated. The painter took the other side.

"Now, O'Hara, careful! Back off a little!—don't let it sway! There—that's where I want it. Get a ladder and clamp the tops. Pitch it a little forward—more!—stop! Fix those pully ropes; I'll make things snug below."

For ten minutes they worked deftly, rapidly, making fast the great blank canvas which had been squared and set with an enormous oval in heavy outline.

From her lofty eyrie she looked down at them as in a dream while they shifted other enormous framed canvases and settled the oval one into place. Everything below seemed to be on rubber wheels or casters, easels, stepladders, colour cabinets, even the great base where the oval set canvas rested.

She looked up at the blue sky. Sparrows dropped out of the brilliant void into unseen canons far below from whence came the softened roar of traffic. Northward the city spread away between its rivers, glittering under the early April sun; the Park lay like a grey and green map set with, the irregular silver of water; beyond, the huge unfinished cathedral loomed dark against the big white hospital of St. Luke; farther still a lilac-tinted haze hung along the edges of the Bronx.

"All right, O'Hara. Much obliged. I won't need you again."

"Very good, Sorr."

The short, broad Irishman went out with another incurious glance aloft, and closed the outer door.

High up on her perch she watched the man below. He calmly removed coat and waistcoat, pulled a painter's linen blouse over his curly head, lighted a cigarette, picked up his palette, fastened a tin cup to the edge, filled it from a bottle, took a handful of brushes and a bunch of cheese cloth, and began to climb up a stepladder opposite her, lugging his sketch in the other hand.

He fastened the little sketch to an upright and stood on the ladder halfway up, one leg higher than the other.

"Now, Miss West," he said decisively.

At the sound of his voice fear again leaped through her like a flame, burning her face as she let slip the white wool robe.

"All right," he said. "Don't move while I'm drawing unless you have to."

She could see him working. He seemed to be drawing with a brush, rapidly, and with, a kind of assurance that appeared almost careless.

At first she could make out little of the lines. They were all dark in tint, thin, tinged with plum colour. There seemed to be no curves in them—and at first she could not comprehend that he was drawing her figure. But after a little while curves appeared; long delicate outlines began to emerge as rounded surfaces in monochrome, casting definite shadows on other surfaces. She could recognise the shape of a human head; saw it gradually become a colourless drawing; saw shoulders, arms, a body emerging into shadowy shape; saw the long fine limbs appear, the slender indication of feet.

Then flat on the cheek lay a patch of brilliant colour, another on the mouth. A great swirl of cloud forms sprang into view high piled in a corner of the canvas.

And now he seemed to be eternally running up and down his ladder, shifting it here and there across the vast white background of canvas, drawing great meaningless lines in distant expanses of the texture, then, always consulting her with his keen, impersonal gaze, he pushed back his ladder, mounted, wiped the big brushes, selected others smaller and flatter, considering her in penetrating silence between every brush, stroke.

She saw a face and hair growing lovely under her eyes, bathed in an iris-tinted light; saw little exquisite flecks of colour set here and there on the white expanse; watched all so intently, so wonderingly, that the numbness of her body became a throbbing pain before she was aware that she was enduring torture.

She strove to move, gave a little gasp; and he was down from his ladder and up on hers before her half-paralysed body had swayed to the edge of danger.

"Why didn't you say so?" he asked, sharply. "I can't keep track of time when I'm working!"

With arms and fingers that scarcely obeyed her she contrived to gather the white wool covering around her shoulders and limbs and lay back.

"You know," he said, "that it's foolish to act this way. I don't want to kill you, Miss West."

She only lowered her head amid its lovely crown of hair.

"You know your own limits," he said, resentfully. He looked down at the big clock: "It's a full hour. You had only to speak. Why didn't you?"

"I—I didn't know what to say."

"Didn't know!" He paused, astonished. Then: "Well, you felt yourself getting numb, didn't you?"

"Y-yes. But I thought it was—to be expected"—she blushed vividly under his astonished gaze: "I think I had better tell you that—that this is—the first time."

"The first time!"

"Yes… . I ought to have told you. I was afraid you might not want me."

"Lord above!" he breathed. "You poor—poor little thing!"

She began to cry silently; he saw the drops fall shining on the white wool robe, and leaned one elbow on the ladder, watching them. After a while they ceased, but she still held her head low, and her face was bent in the warm shadow of her hair.

"How could I understand?" he asked very gently.

"I—should have told you. I was afraid."

He said: "I'm terribly sorry. It must have been perfect torture for you to undress—to come into the studio. If you'd only given me an idea of how matters stood I could have made it a little easier. I'm afraid I was brusque—taking it for granted that you were a model and knew your business… . I'm terribly sorry."

She lifted her head, looked at him, with the tears still clinging to her lashes.

"You have been very nice to me. It is all my own fault."

He smiled. "Then it's all right, now that we understand. Isn't it?"

"Yes."

"You make a stunning model," he said frankly.

"Do I? Then you will let me come again?"

"Let you!" He laughed; "I'll be more likely to beg you."

"Oh, you won't have to," she said; "I'll come as long as you want me."

"That is simply angelic of you. Tell me, do you wish to descend to terra firma?"

She glanced below, doubtfully:

"N-no, thank you. If I could only stretch my—legs—"

"Stretch away," he said, much amused, "but don't tumble off and break into pieces. I like you better as you are than as an antique and limbless Venus."

She cautiously and daintily extended first one leg then the other under the wool robe, then eased the cramped muscles of her back, straightening her body and flexing her arms with a little sigh of relief. As her shy sidelong gaze reverted to him she saw to her relief that he was not noticing her. A slight sense of warmth, suffused her body, and she stretched herself again, more confidently, and ventured to glance around.

"Speaking of terms," he said in an absent way, apparently preoccupied with the palette which he was carefully scraping, "do you happen to know what is the usual recompense for a model's service?"

She said that she had heard, and added with quick diffidence that she could not expect so much, being only a beginner.

He polished the surface of the palette with a handful of cheese cloth:

"Don't you think that you are worth it?"

"How can I be until I know how to pose for you?"

"You will never have to learn how to pose, Miss West."

"I don't know exactly what you mean."

"I mean that some models never learn. Some know how already—you, for example."

She flushed slightly: "Do you really mean that?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say so if I didn't. It's merely necessary for you to accustom yourself to holding a pose; the rest you already know instinctively."

"What is the rest?" she ventured to ask. "I don't quite understand what you see in me—"

"Well," he said placidly, "you are beautifully made. That is nine-tenths of the matter. Your head is set logically on your neck, and your neck is correctly placed on your spine, and your legs and arms are properly attached to your torso—your entire body, anatomically speaking, is hinged, hung, supported, developed as the ideal body should be. It's undeformed, unmarred, unspoiled, and that's partly luck, partly inheritance, and mostly decent habits and digestion."

She was listening intently, interested, surprised, her pink lips slightly parted.

"Another point," he continued; "you seem unable to move or rest ungracefully. Few women are so built that an ungraceful motion is impossible for them. You are one of the few. It's all a matter of anatomy."

She remained silent, watching him curiously.

He said: "But the final clincher to your qualifications is that you are intelligent. I have known pretty women," he added with, sarcasm, "who were not what learned men would call precisely intelligent. But you are. I showed you my sketch, indicated in a general way what I wanted, and instinctively and intelligently you assumed the proper attitude. I didn't have to take you by the chin and twist your head as though you were a lay figure; I didn't have to pull you about and flex and bend and twist you. You knew that I wanted you to look like some sort of an ethereal immortality, deliciously relaxed, adrift in sunset clouds. And you were it—somehow or other."

She looked down, thoughtfully, nestling to the chin in the white wool folds. A smile, almost imperceptible, curved her lips.

"You are making it very easy for me," she said.

"You make it easy for yourself."

"I was horribly afraid," she said thoughtfully.

"I have no doubt of it."

"Oh, you don't know—nobody can know—no man can understand the terror of—of the first time—"

"It must be a ghastly experience."

"It is!—I don't mean that you have not done everything to make it easier—but—there in the little room—my courage left me—I almost died. I'd have run away only—I was afraid you wouldn't let me—"

He began to laugh; she tried to, but the terror of it all was as yet too recent.

"At first," she said, "I was afraid I wouldn't do for a model—not exactly afraid of my—my appearance, but because I was a novice; and I imagined that one had to know exactly how to pose—"

"I think," he interrupted smilingly, "that you might take the pose again if you are rested. Go on talking; I don't mind it."

She sat erect, loosened the white wool robe and dropped it from her with less consciousness and effort than before. Very carefully she set her feet on the blocks, fitting the shapely heels to the chalked outlines; found the mark for her elbow, adjusted her slim, smooth body and looked at him, flushing.

"All right," he said briefly; "go ahead and talk to me."

"Do you wish me to?"

"Yes; I'd rather."

"I don't know exactly what to say."

"Say anything," he returned absently, selecting a flat brush with a very long handle.

She thought a moment, then, lifting her eyes:

"I might ask you your name."

"What? Don't you know it? Oh, Lord! Oh, Vanity! I thought you'd heard of me."

She blushed, confused by her ignorance and what she feared was annoyance on his part; then perceived that he was merely amused; and her face cleared.

"We folk who create concrete amusement for the public always imagine ourselves much better known to that public than we are, Miss West. It's our little vanity—rather harmless after all. We're a pretty decent lot, sometimes absurd, especially in our tragic moments; sometimes emotional, usually illogical, often impulsive, frequently tender-hearted as well as supersensitive.

"Now it was a pleasant little vanity for me to take it for granted that somehow you had heard of me and had climbed twelve flights of stairs for the privilege of sitting for me."

He laughed so frankly that the shy, responsive smile made her face enchanting; and he coolly took advantage of it, and while exciting and stimulating it, affixed it immortally on the exquisite creature he was painting.

"So you didn't climb those twelve flights solely for the privilege of having me paint you?"

"No," she admitted, laughingly, "I was merely going to begin at the top and apply for work all the way down until somebody took me—or nobody took me."

"But why begin at the top?"

"It is easier to bear disappointment going down," she said, seriously; "if two or three artists had refused me on the first and second floors, my legs would not have carried me up very far."

"Bad logic," he commented. "We mount by experience, using our wrecked hopes as footholds."

"You don't know how much a girl can endure. There comes a time-after years of steady descent—when misfortune and disappointment become endurable; when hope deferred no longer sickens. It is in rising toward better things that disappointments hurt most cruelly."

He turned his head in surprise; then went on painting:

"Your philosophy is the philosophy of submission."

"Do you call a struggle of years, submission?"

"But it was giving up after all—acquiescence, despondency, a laissez faire policy."

"One may tire of fighting."

"One may. Another may not."

"I think you have never had to fight very hard."

He turned his head abruptly; after a moment's silent survey of her, he resumed his painting with a sharp, impersonal glance before every swift and decisive brush stroke:

"No; I have never had to fight, Miss West… . It was keen of you to recognise it. I have never had to fight at all. Things come easily to me—things have a habit of coming my way… . I suppose I'm not exactly the man to lecture anybody on the art of fighting fortune. She's always been decent to me… . Sometimes I'm afraid—I have an instinct that she's too friendly… . And it troubles me. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Yes."

He looked up at her: "Are you sure?"

"I think so. I have been watching you painting. I never imagined anybody could draw so swiftly, so easily—paint so surely, so accurately—that every brush stroke could be so—so significant, so decisive… . Is it not unusual? And is not that what is called facility?"

"Lord in Heaven!" he said; "what kind of a girl am I dealing with?—or what kind of a girl is dealing so unmercifully with me?"

"I—I didn't mean—"

"Yes, you did. Those very lovely and wonderfully shaped eyes of yours are not entirely for ornament. Inside that pretty head there's an apparatus designed for thinking; and it isn't idle."

He laughed gaily, a trifle defiantly:

"You've said it. You've found the fly in the amber. I'm cursed with facility. Worse still it gives me keenest pleasure to employ it. It does scare me occasionally—has for years—makes me miserable at intervals—fills me full of all kinds of fears and doubts."

He turned toward her, standing on his ladder, the big palette curving up over his left shoulder, a wet brush extended in his right hand:

"What shall I do!" he exclaimed so earnestly that she sat up straight, startled, forgetting her pose. "Ought I to stifle the vigour, the energy, the restless desire that drives me to express myself—that will not tolerate the inertia of calculation and ponderous reflection? Ought I to check myself, consider, worry, entangle myself in psychologies, seek for subtleties where none exist—split hairs, relapse into introspective philosophy when my fingers itch for a lump of charcoal and every colour on my set palette yells at me to be about my business?"

He passed the flat tip of his wet brush through the mass of rags in his left hand with a graceful motion like one unsheathing a sword:

"I tell you I do the things which I do, as easily, as naturally, as happily as any fool of a dicky-bird does his infernal twittering on an April morning. God knows whether there's anything in my work or in his twitter; but neither he nor I are likely to improve our output by pondering and cogitation… . Please resume the pose."

She did so, her dark young eyes on him; and he continued painting and talking in his clear, rapid, decisive manner:

"My name is Louis Neville. They call me Kelly—my friends do," he added, laughing. "Have you ever seen any of my work?"

"Yes."

He laughed again: "That's more soothing. However, I suppose you saw that big canvas of mine for the ceiling of the Metropolitan Museum's new northwest wing. The entire town saw it."

"Yes, I saw it."

"Did you care for it?"

She had cared for it too intensely to give him any adequate answer. Never before had her sense of colour and form and beauty been so exquisitely satisfied by the painted magic of any living painter. So this was the man who had enveloped her, swayed her senses, whirled her upward into his ocean of limpid light! This was the man who had done that miracle before which, all day long, crowds of the sober, decent, unimaginative—the solid, essentials of the nation—had lingered fascinated! This was the man—across there on a stepladder. And he was evidently not yet thirty; and his name was Neville and his friends called him Kelly.

"Yes," she said, diffidently, "I cared for it."

"Really?"

He caught her eye, laughed, and went on with his work.

"The critics were savage," he said. "Lord! It hurts, too. But I've simply got to be busy. What good would it do me to sit down and draw casts with a thin, needle-pointed stick of hard charcoal. Not that they say I can't draw. They admit that I can. They admit that I can paint, too."

He laughed, stretched his arms:

"Draw! A blank canvas sets me mad. When I look at one I feel like covering it with a thousand figures twisted into every intricacy and difficulty of foreshortening! I wish I were like that Hindu god with a dozen arms; and even then I couldn't paint fast enough to satisfy what my eyes and brain have already evoked upon an untouched canvas… . It's a sort of intoxication that gets hold of me; I'm perfectly cool, too, which seems a paradox but isn't. And all the while, inside me, is a constant, hushed kind of laughter, bubbling, which accompanies every brush stroke with an 'I told you so!'—if you know what I'm trying to say—do you?"

"N-not exactly. But I suppose you mean that you are self-confident."

"Lord! Listen to this girl say in a dozen words what I'm trying to say in a volume so that it won't scare me! Yes! That's it. I am confident. And it's that self-confidence which sometimes scares me half to death."

From his ladder he pointed with his brush to the preliminary sketch that faced her, touching figure after figure:

"I'm going to draw them in, now," he said; "first this one. Can you catch the pose? It's going to be hard; I'll block up your heels, later; that's it! Stand up straight, stretch as though the next moment you were going to rise on tiptoe and float upward without an effort—"

He was working like lightning in long, beautiful, clean outline strokes, brushed here and there with shadow shapes and masses. And time flew at first, then went slowly, more slowly, until it dragged at her delicate body and set every nerve aching.

"I—may I rest a moment?"

"Sure thing!" he said, cordially, laying aside palette and brushes. "Come on, Miss West, and we'll have luncheon."

She hastily swathed herself in the wool robe.

"Do you mean—here?"

"Yes. There's a dumb-waiter. I'll ring for the card."

"I'd like to," she said, "but do you think I had better?"

"Why not?"

"You mean—take lunch with you?"

"Why not?"

"Is it customary?"

"No, it isn't."

"Then I think I will go out to lunch somewhere—"

"I'm not going to let you get away," he said, laughing. "You're too good to be real; I'm worried half to death for fear that you'll vanish in a golden cloud, or something equally futile and inconsiderate. No, I want you to stay. You don't mind, do you?"

He was aiding her to descend from her eyrie, her little white hand balanced on his arm. When she set foot on the floor she looked up at him gravely:

"You wouldn't let me do anything that I ought not to, would you, Mr. Kelly—I mean Mr. Neville?" she added in confusion.

"No. Anyway I don't know what you ought or ought not to do. Luncheon is a simple matter of routine. It's sole significance is two empty stomachs. I suppose if you go out you will come back, but—I'd rather you'd remain."

"Why?"

"Well," he admitted with a laugh, "it's probably because I like to hear myself talk to you. Besides, I've always the hope that you'll suddenly become conversational, and that's a possibility exciting enough to give anybody an appetite."

"But I have conversed with you," she said.

"Only a little. What you said acted like a cocktail to inspire me for a desire for more."

"I am afraid that you were not named Kelly in vain."

"You mean blarney? No, it's merely frankness. Let me get you some bath-slippers—"

"Oh—but if I am to lunch here—I can't do it this way!" she exclaimed in flushed consternation.

"Indeed you must learn to do that without embarrassment, Miss West. Tie up your robe at the throat, tuck up your sleeves, slip your feet into a nice pair of brand-new bath-slippers, and I'll ring for luncheon."

"I—don't—want to—" she began; but he went away into the hall, rang, and presently she heard the ascending clatter of a dumb-waiter. From it he took the luncheon card and returned to where she was sitting at a rococo table. She blushed as he laid the card before her, and would have nothing to do with it. The result was that he did the ordering, sent the dumb-waiter down with his scribbled memorandum, and came wandering back with long, cool glances at his canvas and the work he had done on it.

"I mean to make a stunning thing of it," he remarked, eying the huge chassis critically. "All this—deviltry—whatever it is inside of me—must come out somehow. And that canvas is the place for it." He laughed and sat down opposite her:

"Man is born to folly, Miss West—born full of it. I get rid of mine on canvas. It's a safer outlet for original sin than some other ways."

She lay back in her antique gilded chair, hands extended along the arms, looking at him with a smile that was still shy.

"My idea of you—of an artist—was so different," she said.

"There are all kinds, mostly the seriously inspired and humourless variety who makes a mystic religion of a very respectable profession. This world is full of pale, enraptured artists; full of muscular, thumb-smearing artists; full of dreamy weavers of visions, usually deficient in spinal process; full of unwashed little inverts to whom the world really resembles a kaleidoscope full of things that wiggle—"

They began to laugh, he with a singular delight in her comprehension of his idle, irresponsible chatter, she from sheer pleasure in listening and looking at this man who was so different from anybody she had ever known—and, thank God!—so young.

And when the bell rang and the clatter announced the advent of luncheon, she settled in her chair with a little shiver of happiness, blushing at her capacity for it, and at her acquiescence in the strangest conditions in which she had ever found herself in all her life,—conditions so bizarre, so grotesque, so impossible that there was no use in trying to consider them—alas! no point in blushing now.

Mechanically she settled her little naked feet deep into the big bath-slippers, tucked up her white wool sleeves to the dimpled elbow, and surveyed the soup which he had placed before her to serve.

"I know perfectly well that this isn't right," she said, helping him and then herself. "But I am wondering what there is about it that isn't right."

"Isn't it demoralising!" he said, amused.

"I—wonder if it is?"

He laughed: "Such ideas are nonsense, Miss West. Listen to me: you and I—everybody except those with whom something is physically wrong—are born with a full and healthy capacity for demoralisation and mischief. Mischief is only one form of energy. If lightning flies about unguided it's likely to do somebody some damage; if it's conducted properly to a safe terminal there's no damage done and probably a little good."

"Your brushes are your lightning-rods?" she suggested, laughing.

"Certainly. I only demoralise canvas. What outlet have you for your perfectly normal deviltry?"

"I haven't any."

"Any deviltry?"

"Any outlet."

"You ought to have."

"Ought I?"

"Certainly. You are as full of restless energy as I am."

"Oh, I don't think I am."

"You are. Look at yourself! I never saw anybody so sound, so superbly healthy, so"—he laughed—"adapted to dynamics. You've got to have an outlet. Or there'll be the deuce to pay."

She looked at her fruit salad gravely, tasted it, and glanced up at him:

"I have never in all my life had any outlet—never even any outlook, Mr. Neville."

"You should have had both," he grumbled, annoyed at himself for the interest her words had for him; uneasy, now that she had responded, yet curious to learn something about this fair young girl, approximately his intellectual equal, who came to his door looking for work as a model. He thought to himself that probably it was some distressing tale which he couldn't help, and the recital of which would do neither of them any good. Of stories of models' lives he was tired, satiated. There was no use encouraging her to family revelations; an easy, pleasant footing was far more amusing to maintain. The other hinted of intimacy; and that he had never tolerated in his employees.

Yet, looking now across the table at her, a not unkind curiosity began to prod him. He could easily have left matters where they were, maintained the status quo indefinitely—or as long as he needed her services.

"Outlets are necessary," he said, cautiously. "Otherwise we go to the bow-wows."

"Or—die."

"What?" sharply.

She looked up without a trace of self-consciousness or the least hint of the dramatic:

"I would die unless I had an outlet. This is almost one. At least it gives me something to do with my life."

"Posing?"

"Yes."

"I don't quite understand you."

"Why, I only mean that—the other"—she smiled—"what you call the bow-wows, would not have been an outlet for me… . I was a show-girl for two months last winter; I ought to know. And I'd rather have died than—"

"I see," he said; "that outlet was too stupid to have attracted you."

She nodded. "Besides, I have principles," she said, candidly.

"Which effectually blocked that outlet. They sometimes kill, too, as you say. Youth stifled too long means death—the death of youth at least. Outlets mean life. The idea is to find a safe one."

She flushed in quick, sensitive response:

"That is it; that is what I meant. Mr. Neville, I am twenty-one; and do you know I never had a childhood? And I am simply wild for it—for the girlhood and the playtime that I never had—"

She checked herself, looking across at him uncertainly.

"Go on," he nodded.

"That is all."

"No; tell me the rest."

She sat with head bent, slender fingers picking at her napkin; then, without raising her troubled eyes:

"Life has been—curious. My mother was bedridden. My childhood and girlhood were passed caring for her. That is all I ever did until—a year ago," she added, her voice falling so low he could scarcely hear her.

"She died, then?"

"A year ago last February."

"You went to school. You must have made friends there."

"I went to a public school for a year. After that mother taught me."

"She must have been extremely cultivated."

The girl nodded, looking absently at the cloth. Then, glancing up:

"I wonder whether you will understand me when I tell you why I decided to ask employment of artists."

"I'll try to," he said, smiling.

"It was an intense desire to be among cultivated people—if only for a few hours. Besides, I had read about artists; and their lives seemed so young, so gay, so worth living—please don't think me foolish and immature, Mr. Neville—but I was so stifled, so cut off from such people, so uninspired, so—so starved for a little gaiety—and I needed youthful companionship—surroundings where people of my own age and intelligence sometimes entered—and I had never had it—"

She looked at him with a strained, wistful expression as though begging him to understand her:

"I couldn't remain at the theatre," she said. "I had little talent—no chance except chances I would not tolerate; no companionship except what I was unfitted for by education and inclination… . The men were—impossible. There may have been girls I could have liked—but I did not meet them. So, as I had to do something—and my years of seclusion with mother had unfitted me for any business—for office work or shop work—I thought that artists might care to employ me—might give me—or let me see—be near—something of the gayer, brighter, more pleasant and youthful side of life—"

She ceased, bent her head thoughtfully.

"You want—friends? Young ones—with intellects? You want to combine these with a chance of making a decent living?"

"Yes." She looked up candidly: "I am simply starved for it. You must believe that when you see what I have submitted to—gone through with in your studio"—she blushed vividly—"in a—a desperate attempt to escape the—the loneliness, the silence and isolation"—she raised her dark eyes—"the isolation of the poor," she said. "You don't know what that means."

After a moment she added, level-eyed: "For which there is supposed to be but one outlet—if a girl is attractive."

He rose, walked to and fro for a few moments, then, halting:

"All memory of the initial terror and distress and uncertainty aside, have you not enjoyed this morning, Miss West?"

"Yes, I—have. I—you have no idea what it has meant to me."

"It has given you an outlook, anyway."

"Yes… . Only—I'm terrified at the idea of going through it again—with another man—"

He laughed, and she tried to, saying:

"But if all artists are as kind and considerate—"

"Plenty of 'em are more so. There are a few bounders, a moderate number of beasts. You'll find them everywhere in the world from the purlieus to the pulpit… . I'm going to make a contract with you. After that, regretfully, I'll see that you meet the men who will be valuable to you… . I wish there was some way I could box you up in a jeweller's case so that nobody else could have you and I could find you when I needed you!"

She laughed shyly, extended her slim white hand for him to support her while she mounted to her eyrie. Then, erect, delicately flushed, she let the robe fall from her and stood looking down at him in silence.

Chapter 2

 

Spring came unusually early that year. By the first of the month a few willows and thorn bushes in the Park had turned green; then, in a single day, the entire Park became lovely with golden bell-flowers, and the first mowing machine clinked over the greenswards leaving a fragrance of clipped verdure in its wake.

Under a characteristic blue sky April unfolded its myriad leaves beneath which robins ran over shaven lawns and purple grackle bustled busily about, and the water fowl quacked and whistled and rushed through the water nipping and chasing one another or, sidling alongside, began that nodding, bowing, bobbing acquaintance preliminary to aquatic courtship.

Many of the wild birds had mated; many were mating; amorous caterwauling on back fences made night an inferno; pigeons cooed and bubbled and made endless nuisances of themselves all day long.

In lofts, offices, and shops youthful faces, whitened by the winter's pallour, appeared at open windows gazing into the blue above, or, with, pretty, inscrutable eyes, studied the passing throng till the lifted eyes of youth below completed the occult circuit with a smile.

And the spring sunshine grew hot, and sprinkling carts appeared, and the metropolis moulted its overcoats, and the derby became a burden, and the annual spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design remained uncrowded.

Neville, lunching at the Syrinx Club, carelessly caught the ball of conversation tossed toward him and contributed his final comment:

"Burleson—and you, Sam Ogilvy—and you, Annan, all say that the exhibition is rotten. You say so every year; so does the majority of people. And the majority will continue saying the same thing throughout the coming decades as long as there are any exhibitions to damn.

"It is the same thing in other countries. For a hundred years the majority has pronounced every Salon rotten. And it will so continue.

"But the facts are these: the average does not vary much. A mediocrity, not disagreeable, always rules; supremity has been, is, and always will be the stick in the riffle around which the little whirlpool will always centre. This year it happens to be José Querida who stems the sparkling mediocrity and sticks up from the bottom gravel making a fine little swirl. Next year—or next decade it may be anybody—you, Annan, or Sam—perhaps," he added with a slight smile, "it might be I. Quand même. The exhibitions are no rottener than they have ever been; and it's up to us to go about our business. And I'm going. Good-bye."

He rose from the table, laid aside the remains of his cigar, nodded good-humouredly to the others, and went out with that quick, graceful, elastic step which was noticed by everybody and envied by many.

"Hell," observed John Burleson, hitching his broad shoulders forward and swallowing a goblet of claret at a single gulp, "it's all right for Kelly Neville to shed sweetness and light over a rotten exhibition where half the people are crowded around his own picture."

"What a success he's having," mused Ogilvy, looking sideways out of the window at a pretty girl across the street.

Annan nodded: "He works hard enough for it."

"He works all the time," grumbled Burleson, "but, does he work hard?"

"A cat scrambling in a molasses barrel works hard," observed Ogilvy—"if you see any merit in that, John."

Burleson reared his huge frame and his symmetrical features became more bovine than ever:

"What the devil has a cat in a molasses barrel to do with the subject?" he demanded.

Annan laughed: "Poor old honest, literal John," he said, lazily. "Listen; from my back window in the country, yesterday, I observed one of my hens scratching her ear with her foot. How would you like to be able to accomplish that, John?"

"I wouldn't like it at all!" roared Burleson in serious disapproval.

"That's because you're a sculptor and a Unitarian," said Annan, gravely.

"My God!" shouted Burleson, "what's that got to do with a hen scratching herself!"

Ogilvy was too weak with laughter to continue the favourite pastime of "touching up John"; and Burleson who, under provocation, never exhibited any emotion except impatient wonder at the foolishness of others, emptied his claret bottle with unruffled confidence in his own common-sense and the futility of his friends.

"Kelly, they say, is making a stunning lot of stuff for that Byzantine Theatre," he said in his honest, resonant voice. "I wish to Heaven I could paint like him."

Annan passed his delicate hand over his pale, handsome face: "Kelly Neville is, without exception, the most gifted man I ever knew."

"No, the most skilful," suggested Ogilvy. "I have known more gifted men who never became skilful."

"What hair is that you're splitting, Sam?" demanded Burleson. "Don't you like Kelly's work?"

"Sure I do."

"What's the matter with it, then?"

There was a silence. One or two men at neighbouring tables turned partly around to listen. There seemed to be something in the very simple and honest question of John Burleson that arrested the attention of every man at the Syrinx Club who had heard it. Because, for the first time, the question which every man there had silently, involuntarily asked himself had been uttered aloud at last by John Burleson—voiced in utter good faith and with all confidence that the answer could be only that there was nothing whatever the matter with Louis Neville's work. And his answer had been a universal silence.

Clive Gail, lately admitted to the Academy said: "I have never in my life seen or believed possible such facility as is Louis Neville's."

"Sure thing," grunted Burleson.

"His personal manner of doing his work—which the critics and public term 'tek—nee—ee—eek,'" laughed Annan, "is simply gloriously bewildering. There is a sweeping splendour to it—and what colour!"

There ensued murmured and emphatic approbation; and another silence.

Ogilvy's dark, pleasant face was troubled when he broke the quiet, and everybody turned toward him:

"Then," he said, slowly, "what is the matter with Neville?"

Somebody said: "He does convince you; it isn't that, is it?"

A voice replied: "Does he convince himself?"

"There is—there always has been something lacking in all that big, glorious, splendid work. It only needs that one thing—whatever it is," said Ogilvy, quietly. "Kelly is too sure, too powerfully perfect, too omniscient—"

"And we mortals can't stand that," commented Annan, laughing. "'Raus mit Neville!' He paints joy and sorrow as though he'd never known either—"

And his voice checked itself of its own instinct in the startled silence.

"That man, Neville, has never known the pain of work," said Gail, deliberately. "When he has passed through it and it has made his hand less steady, less omnipotent—"

"That's right. We can't love a man who has never endured what we have," said another. "No genius can hide his own immunity. That man paints with an unscarred soul. A little hell for his—and no living painter could stand beside him."

"Piffle," observed John Burleson.

Ogilvy said: "It is true, I think, that out of human suffering a quality is distilled which affects everything one does. Those who have known sorrow can best depict it—not perhaps most plausibly, but most convincingly—and with fewer accessories, more reticence, and—better taste."

"Why do you want to paint tragedies?" demanded Burleson.

"One need not paint them, John, but one needs to understand them to paint anything else—needs to have lived them, perhaps, to become a master of pictured happiness, physical or spiritual."

"That's piffle, too!" said Burleson in his rumbling bass—"like that damn hen you lugged in—"

A shout of laughter relieved everybody.

"Do you want a fellow to go and poke his head into trouble and get himself mixed up in a tragedy so that he can paint better?" insisted Burleson, scornfully.

"There's usually no necessity to hunt trouble," said Annan.

"But you say that Kelly never had any and that he'd paint better if he had."

"Trouble might be the making of Kelly Neville," mused Ogilvy, "and it might not. It depends, John, not on the amount and quality of the hell, but on the man who's frying on the gridiron."

Annan said: "Personally I don't see how Kelly could paint happiness or sorrow or wonder or fear into any of his creations any more convincingly than he does. And yet—and yet—sometimes we love men for their shortcomings—for the sincerity of their blunders—for the fallible humanity in them. That after all is where love starts. The rest—what Kelly shows us—evokes wonder, delight, awe, enthusiasm… . If he could only make us love him—"

"I love him!" said Burleson.

"We all are inclined to—if we could get near enough to him," said Annan with a faint smile.

"Him—or his work?"

"Both, John. There's a vast amount of nonsense talked about the necessity of separation between a man and his work—that the public has no business with the creator, only with his creations. It is partly true. Still, no man ever created anything in which he did not include a sample of himself—if not what he himself is, at least what he would like to be and what he likes and dislikes in others. No creator who shows his work can hope to remain entirely anonymous. And—I am not yet certain that the public has no right to make its comments on the man who did the work as well as on the work which it is asked to judge."

"The man is nothing; the work everything," quoted Burleson, heavily.

"So I've heard," observed Annan, blandly. "It's rather a precious thought, isn't it, John?"

"Do you consider that statement to be pure piffle?"

"Partly, dear friend. But I'm one of those nobodies who cherish a degenerate belief that man comes first, and then his works, and that the main idea is to get through life as happily as possible with the minimum of inconvenience to others. Human happiness is what I venture to consider more important than the gim-cracks created by those same humans. Man first, then man's work, that's the order of mundane importance to me. And if you've got to criticise the work, for God's sake do it with your hand on the man's shoulder."

"Our little socialist," said Ogilvy, patting Annan's blonde head. "He wants to love everybody and everybody to love him, especially when they're ornamental and feminine. Yes? No?" he asked, fondly coddling Annan, who submitted with a bored air and tried to kick his shins.

Later, standing in a chance group on the sidewalk before scattering to their several occupations, Burleson said:

"That's a winner of a model—that Miss West. I used her for the fountain I'm doing for Cardemon's sunken garden. I never saw a model put together as she is. And that's going some."

"She's a dream," said Ogilvy—"un pen sauvage—no inclination to socialism there, Annan. I know because I was considering the advisability of bestowing upon her one of those innocent, inadvertent, and fascinatingly chaste salutes—just to break the formality. She wouldn't have it. I'd taken her to the theatre, too. Girls are astonishing problems."

"You're a joyous beast, aren't you, Sam?" observed Burleson.

"I may be a trifle joyous. I tried to explain that to her, but she wouldn't listen. Heaven knows my intentions are child-like. I liked her because she's the sort of girl you can take anywhere and not queer yourself if you collide with your fiancée—visiting relative from 'Frisco, you know. She's equipped to impersonate anything from the younger set to the prune and pickle class."

"She certainly is a looker," nodded Annan.

"She can deliver the cultivated goods, too, and make a perfectly good play at the unsophisticated intellectual," said Ogilvy with conviction. "And it's a rare combination to find a dream that looks as real at the Opera as it does in a lobster palace. But she's no socialist, Harry—she'll ride in a taxi with you and sit up half the night with you, but it's nix for getting closer, and the frozen Fownes for the chaste embrace—that's all."

"She's a curious kind of girl," mused Burleson;—"seems perfectly willing to go about with you;—enjoys it like one of those bread-and-butter objects that the department shops call a 'Miss.'"

Annan said: "The girl is unusual, everyway. You don't know where to place her. She's a girl without a caste. I like her. I made some studies from her; Kelly let me."

"Does Kelly own her?" asked Burleson, puffing out his chest.

"He discovered her. He has first call."

Allaire, who had come up, caught the drift of the conversation.

"Oh, hell," he said, in his loud, careless voice, "anybody can take Valerie West to supper. The town's full of her kind."

"Have you taken her anywhere?" asked Annan, casually.

Allaire flushed up: "I haven't had time." He added something which changed the fixed smile on his symmetrical, highly coloured face into an expression not entirely agreeable.

"The girl's all right," said Burleson, reddening. "She's damn decent to everybody. What are you talking about, Allaire? Kelly will put a head on you!"

Allaire, careless and assertive, shrugged away the rebuke with a laugh:

"Neville is one of those professional virgins we read about in our neatly manicured fiction. He's what is known as the original mark. Jezebel and Potiphar's wife in combination with Salome and the daughters of Lot couldn't disturb his confidence in them or in himself. And—in my opinion—he paints that way, too." And he went away laughing and swinging his athletic shoulders and twirling his cane, his hat not mathematically straight on his handsome, curly head.

"There strides a joyous bounder," observed Ogilvy.

"Curious," mused Annan. "His family is oldest New York. You see 'em that way, at times."

Burleson, who came from New England, grunted his scorn for Manhattan, ancient or recent, and, nodding a brusque adieu, walked away with ponderous and powerful strides. And the others followed, presently, each in pursuit of his own vocation, Annan and Ogilvy remaining together as their common destination was the big new studio building which they as well as Neville inhabited.

Passing Neville's door they saw it still ajar, and heard laughter and a piano and gay voices.

"Hi!" exclaimed Ogilvy, softly, "let's assist at the festivities. Probably we're not wanted, but does that matter, Harry?"

"It merely adds piquancy to our indiscretion," said Annan, gravely, following him in unannounced—"Oh, hello, Miss West! Was that you playing? Hello, Rita"—greeting a handsome blonde young girl who stretched out a gloved hand to them both and nodded amiably. Then she glanced upward where, perched on his ladder, big palette curving over his left elbow, Neville stood undisturbed by the noise below, outlining great masses of clouds on a canvas where a celestial company, sketched in from models, soared, floated, or hung suspended, cradled in mid air with a vast confusion of wide wings spreading, fluttering, hovering, beating the vast ethereal void, all in pursuit of a single exquisite shape darting up into space.

"What's all that, Kelly? Leda chased by swans?" asked Ogilvy, with all the disrespect of cordial appreciation.

"It's the classic game of follow my Leda," observed Annan.

"Oh—oh!" exclaimed Valerie West, laughing; "such a wretched witticism, Mr. Annan!"

"Your composition is one magnificent vista of legs, Kelly," insisted Ogilvy. "Put pants on those swans."

Neville merely turned and threw an empty paint tube at him, and continued his cloud outlining with undisturbed composure.

"Where have you been, Rita?" asked Ogilvy, dropping into a chair. "Nobody sees you any more."

"That's because nobody went to the show, and that's why they took it off," said Rita Tevis, resentfully. "I had a perfectly good part which nobody crabbed because nobody wanted it, which suited me beautifully because I hate to have anything that others want. Now there's nothing doing in the millinery line and I'm ready for suggestions."

"Dinner with me," said Ogilvy, fondly. But she turned up her dainty nose:

"Have you anything more interesting to offer, Mr. Annan?"

"Only my heart, hand, and Ogilvy's fortune," said Annan, regretfully. "But I believe Archie Allaire was looking for a model of your type—"

"I don't want to pose for Mr. Allaire," said the girl, pouting and twirling the handle of her parasol.

But neither Annan nor Ogilvy could use her then; and Neville had just finished a solid week of her.

"What I'll do," she said with decision, "will be to telephone John Burleson. I never knew him to fail a girl in search of an engagement."

"Isn't he a dear," said Valerie, smiling. "I adore him."

She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over the keyboard, listening to what was being said, watching with happy interest everything that was going on around her, and casting an occasional glance over her shoulder and upward to where Neville stood at work.

"John Burleson," observed Rita, looking fixedly at Ogilvy, "is easily the nicest man I know."

"Help!" said Ogilvy, feebly.

Valerie glanced across the top of the piano, laughing, while her hands passed idly here and there over the keys:

"Sam can be very nice, Rita; but you've got to make him," she said.

"Did you ever know a really interesting man who didn't require watching?" inquired Annan, mildly.

Rita surveyed him with disdain: "Plenty."

"Don't believe it. No girl has any very enthusiastic use for a man in whom she has perfect confidence."

"Here's another profound observation," added Ogilvy; "when a woman loses confidence in a man she finds a brand-new interest in him. But when a man once really loses confidence in a woman, he never regains it, and it's the beginning of the end. What do you think about that, Miss West?"

Valerie, still smiling, struck a light chord or two, considering:

"I don't know how it would be," she said, "to lose confidence in a man you really care much about. I should think it would break a girl's heart."

"It doesn't," said Rita, with supreme contempt. "You become accustomed to it."

Valerie leaned forward against the keyboard, laughing:

"Oh, Rita!" she said, "what a confession!"

"You silly child," retorted Rita, "I'm twenty-two. Do you think I have the audacity to pretend I've never been in love?"

Ogilvy said with a grin: "How about you, Miss West?"—hoping to embarrass her; but she only smiled gaily and continued to play a light accompaniment to the fugitive air that was running through her head.

"Don't be selfish with your experiences," urged Ogilvy. "Come on, Miss West! 'Raus mit 'em!'"

"What do you wish me to say, Sam?"

"That you've been in love several times."

"But I haven't."

"Not once?"

Her lowered face was still smiling, as her pliant fingers drifted into Grieg's "Spring Song."

"Not one pretty amourette to cheer those twenty-one years of yours?" insisted Ogilvy.

But his only answer was her lowered head and the faint smile edging her lips, and the "Spring Song," low, clear, exquisitely persistent in the hush.

When the last note died out in the stillness Rita emphasised the finish with the ferrule of her parasol and rose with decision:

"I require several new frocks," she said, "and how am I to acquire them unless I pose for somebody? Good-bye, Mr. Neville—bye-bye! Sam—good-bye, Mr. Annan—good-bye, dear,"—to Valerie—"if you've nothing better on hand drop in this evening. I've a duck of a new hat."

The girl nodded, and, as Rita Tevis walked out, turning up her nose at Ogilvy who opened the door for her, Valerie glanced up over her shoulder at Neville:

"I don't believe you are going to need me to-day after all, are you?" she asked.

"No," he said, absently. "I've a lot of things to do. You needn't stay, Miss West."

"Now will you be good!" said Annan, smiling at her with his humourous, bantering air. And to his surprise and discomfiture he saw the least trace of annoyance in her dark eyes.

"Come up to the studio and have a julep," he said with hasty cordiality. "And suppose we dine together at Arrowhead—if you've nothing else on hand—"

She shook her head—the movement was scarcely perceptible. The smile had returned to her lips.

"Won't you, Miss West?"

"Isn't it like you to ask me when you heard Rita's invitation? You're a fraud, Mr. Annan."

"Are you going to sit in that boarding-house parlour and examine Rita's new bonnet all this glorious evening?"

She laughed: "Is there any man on earth who can prophesy what any woman on earth is likely to do? If you can, please begin."

Ogilvy, hands clasped behind him, balancing alternately on heels and toes, stood regarding Neville's work. Annan looked up, too, watching Neville where he stood on the scaffolding, busy as always, with the only recreation he cared anything for—work.

"I wish to Heaven I were infected with the bacillus of industry," broke out Ogilvy. "I never come into this place but I see Kelly busily doing something."

"You're an inhuman sort of brute, Kelly!" added Annan. "What do you work that way for—money? If I had my way I'd spend three quarters of my time shooting and fishing and one quarter painting—and I'm as devotedly stuck on art as any healthy man ought to be."

"Art's a bum mistress if she makes you hustle like that!" commented Ogilvy. "Shake her, Kelly. She's a wampire mit a sarpint's tongue!"

"The worst of Kelly is that he'd rather paint," said Annan, hopelessly. "It's sufficient to sicken the proverbial cat."

"Get a machine and take us all out to Woodmanston?" suggested Ogilvy. "It's a bee—u—tiful day, dearie!"

"Get out of here!" retorted Neville, painting composedly.

"Your industry saddens us," insisted Annan. "It's only in mediocrity that you encounter industry. Genius frivols; talent takes numerous vacations on itself—"

"And at its own expense," added Valerie, demurely. "I knew a man who couldn't finish his 'Spring Academy' in time: and he had all winter to finish it. But he didn't. Did you ever hear about that man, Sam?"

"Me," said Ogilvy, bowing with hand on heart. "And with that cruel jab from you—false fair one—I'll continue heavenward in the elevator. Come on, Harry."

Annan took an elaborate farewell of Valerie which she met in the same mock-serious manner; then she waved a gay and dainty adieu to Ogilvy, and reseated herself after their departure. But this time she settled down into a great armchair facing Neville and his canvas, and lay back extending her arms and resting the back of her head on the cushions.

Whether or not Neville was conscious of her presence below she could not determine, so preoccupied did he appear to be with the work in hand. She lay there in the pleasant, mellow light of the great windows, watching him, at first intently, then, soothed by the soft spring wind that fitfully stirred the hair at her temples, she relaxed her attention, idly contented, happy without any particular reason.

Now and then a pigeon flashed by the windows, sheering away high above the sunlit city. Once, wind-caught, or wandering into unaccustomed heights, high in the blue a white butterfly glimmered, still mounting to infinite altitudes, fluttering, breeze-blown, a silvery speck adrift.

"Like a poor soul aspiring," she thought listlessly, watching with dark eyes over which the lids dropped lazily at moments, only to lift again as her gaze reverted to the man above.

She thought about him, too; she usually did—about his niceness to her, his never-to-be-forgotten kindness; her own gratitude to him for her never-to-be-forgotten initiation.

It seemed scarcely possible that two months had passed since her novitiate—that two months ago she still knew nothing of the people, the friendships, the interest, the surcease from loneliness and hopeless apathy, that these new conditions had brought to her.

Had she known Louis Neville only two months? Did all this new buoyancy date from two short months' experience—this quickened interest in life, this happy development of intelligence so long starved, this unfolding of youth in the atmosphere of youth? She found it difficult to realise, lying there so contentedly, so happily, following, with an interest and appreciation always developing, the progress of the work.

Already, to herself, she could interpret much that she saw in this new world. Cant phrases, bits of studio lore, artists' patter, their ways of looking at things, their manners of expression, their mannerisms, their little vanities, their ideas, ideals, aspirations, were fast becoming familiar to her. Also she was beginning to notice and secretly to reflect on their generic characteristics—their profoundly serious convictions concerning themselves and their art modified by surface individualities; their composite lack of humour—exceptions like Ogilvy and Annan, and even Neville only proving the rule; their simplicity, running the entire gamut from candour to stupidity; their patience which was half courage, half a capacity for suffering; and, in the latter, more woman-like than like a man.

Simplicity, courage, lack of humour—those appeared to be the fundamentals characterising the ensemble—supplemented by the extremes of restless intelligence and grim conservatism.

And the whole fabric seemed to be founded not on industry but on impulse born of sentiment. In this new, busy, inspiring, delightful world logic became a synthesis erected upon some inceptive absurdity, carried solemnly to a picturesque and erroneous conclusion.

She had been aware, in stage folk, of the tendency to sentimental impulse; and she again discovered it in this new world, in a form slightly modified by the higher average of reasoning power. In both professions the heart played the dominant part in creator and creation. The exceptions to the rule were the few in either profession who might be called distinguished.

Neville had once said to her: "Nothing that amounts to anything in art is ever done accidentally or merely because the person who creates it loves to do it."

She was thinking of this, now, as she lay there watching him.

He had added: "Enthusiasm is excellent while you're dressing for breakfast; but good pictures are painted in cold blood. Go out into the back yard and yell your appreciation of the universe if you want to; but the studio is a silent place; and a blank canvas a mathematical proposition."

Could this be true? Was all the beauty, all the joyous charm, all the splendour of shape and colour the result of working out a mathematical proposition? Was this exquisite surety of touch and handling, of mass and line composition, all these lovely depths and vast ethereal spaces superbly peopled, merely the logical result of solving that problem? Was it all clear, limpid, steady, nerveless intelligence; and was nothing due to the chance and hazard of inspiration?

Gladys, the cat, walked in, gently flourishing her tail, hesitated, looked around with narrowing green-jewelled eyes, and, ignoring the whispered invitation and the outstretched hand, leaped lightly to a chair and settled down on a silken cushion, paws and tail folded under her jet-black body.

Valerie reproached her in a whisper, reminding her of past caresses and attentions, but the cat only blinked at her pleasantly.

On a low revolving stand at Valerie's elbow lay a large lump of green modelling wax. This wax Neville sometimes used to fashion, with his facile hands, little figures sketched from his models. These he arranged in groups as though to verify the composition on the canvas before him, and this work and the pliant material which he employed had for her a particular and never-flagging interest. And now, without thinking, purely instinctively, she leaned forward and laid her hand caressingly on the lump of wax. There was something about the yielding, velvety texture that fascinated her, as though in her slim fingers some delicate nerves were responding to the pleasure of contact.

For a while she moulded little cubes and pyramids, pinched out bread-crumb chickens and pigs and cats.

"What do you think of this little wax kitten, Gladys?" she whispered, holding it up for the cat's inspection. Gladys regarded it without interest and resumed her pleasant contemplation of space.

Valerie, elbows on knees, seated at the revolving stool with all the naïve absorption of a child constructing mud pies, began to make out of the fascinating green wax an image of Gladys dozing.

Time fled away in the studio; intent, absorbed, she pinched little morsels of wax from the lump and pushed them into place with a snowy, pink-tipped thumb, or with the delicate nail of her forefinger removed superfluous material.

Stepping noiselessly so not to disturb Neville she made frequent journeys around to the other side of the cat, sometimes passing sensitive fingers over silky feline contours, which, research inspired a loud purring.

As she worked sometimes she talked under her breath to herself, to Gladys, to Neville:

"I am making a perfectly good cat, Valerie," she whispered. "Gladys, aren't you a little bit flattered? I suppose you think it's honour enough to belong to that man up there on the scaffolding. I imagine it is; he is a very wonderful man, Gladys, very high above us in intellect as he is in body. He doesn't pay very much attention to you and me down here on the floor; he's just satisfied to own us and be amiable to us when he thinks about us.

"I don't mean that in any critical or reproachful sense, Gladys. Don't you dare think I do—not for one moment! Do you hear me? Well then! If you are stupid enough to misunderstand me I'll put a perfectly horrid pair of ears on you!… I've made a very dainty pair of ears for you, dear; I only said that to frighten you. You and I like that man up there—tremendously, don't we? And we're very grateful to him for—for a great many happy moments—and for his unfailing kindness and consideration… . You don't mind posing for me; you wear fur. But I didn't wear anything, dear, when I first sat to him as a novice; and, kitty, I was a fortunate girl in my choice of the man before whom I was to make a début. And I—"

The rattle of brushes and the creak of the scaffolding arrested her: Neville was coming down for a view of his work.

"Hello," he said, pleasantly, noticing for the first time that she was still in the studio.

"Have I disturbed you, Mr. Neville?"

"Not a bit. You never do any more than does Gladys." He glanced absently at the cat, then, facing his canvas, backed away from it, palette in hand.

For ten minutes he examined his work, shifting his position from minute to minute, until the change of positions brought him backed up beside Valerie, and his thigh brushing her arm made him aware of her. Glancing down with smiling apology his eye fell on the wax, and was arrested. Then he bent over the work she had done, examining it, twirled the top of the stool, and inspected it carefully from every side.

"Have you ever studied modelling, Miss West?"

"No," she said, blushing, "you must know that I haven't." And looked up expecting to see laughter in his eyes; and saw only the curiosity of interest.

"How did you know how to start this?"

"I have often watched you."

"Is that all the instruction you've ever had in modelling?"

She could not quite bring herself to believe in his pleasant seriousness:

"Y-yes," she admitted, "except when I have watched John Burleson. But—this is simply rotten—childish—isn't it?"

"No," he said in a matter of fact tone, "it's interesting."

"Do you really think—mean—"

He looked down at her, considering her while the smile that she knew and liked best and thought best suited to his face, began to glimmer; that amused, boyish, bantering smile hinting of experience and wisdom delightfully beyond her.

"I really think that you're a very unusual girl," he said. "I don't want to spoil you by telling you so every minute."

"You don't spoil me by telling me so. Sometimes I think you may spoil me by not telling me so."

"Miss West! You're spoiled already! I'm throwing bouquets at you every minute! You're about the only girl who ever sat for me with whom I talk unreservedly and incessantly."

"Really, Mr. Neville?"

"Yes—really, Mr. Neville," he repeated, laughing—"you bad, spoiled little beauty! You know devilish well that if there's any intellectual space between you and me it's purely a matter of circumstance and opportunity."

"Do you think me silly enough to believe that!"

"I think you clever enough to know it without my telling you."

"I wish you wouldn't say that."

She was still smiling but in the depths of her eyes he felt that the smile was not genuine.

"See here," he said, "I don't want you to think that I don't mean what I say. I do. You're as intelligent a woman as I ever knew. I've known girls more cultivated in general and in particular, but, I say again, that is the hazard of circumstance. Is all clear between us now, Miss West?"

"Yes."

He held out his hand; she glanced up, smiled, and laid her own in it. And they shook hands heartily.

"Good business," he said with satisfaction. "Don't ever let anything threaten our very charming accord. The moment you don't approve of anything I say or do come straight to me and complain—and don't let me divine it in your eyes, Miss West."

"Did you?"

"Certainly I did. Your lips were smiling but in your eyes was something that did not corroborate your lips."

"Yes… . But how could you see it?"

"After all," he said, "it's part of my business to notice such things." He seated himself on the arm of her chair and bent over the wax model, his shoulder against hers. And the chance contact meant nothing to either: but what he said about men and things in the world was inevitably arousing the intelligence in her to a gratitude, a happiness, at first timid, then stirring subtly, tremulously, toward passionate response.

No man can do that to a girl and leave the higher side of her indifferent or unresponsive. What he had aroused—what he was awakening every day in her was what he must some day reckon with. Loyalty is born of the spirit, devotion of the mind; and spiritual intelligence arouses fiercer passions than the sensuous emotions born of the flesh.

Leaning there above the table, shoulder to shoulder, his light finger tips caressing the wax model which she had begun, he told her clearly, and with the engaging candour which she already had begun to adore in him, all about what she had achieved in the interesting trifle before them—explained to her wherein she had failed not only to accomplish but to see correctly—wherein she had seen clearly and wrought intelligently.

He might have been talking to a brother sculptor—and therein lay the fascination of this man—for her—that, and the pains he always took with her—which courtesy was only part of him—part of the wonder of this man; of his unerring goodness in all things to her.

Listening, absorbed in all that he said she still was conscious of a parallel thread of thought accompanying—a tiny filament of innocent praise in her heart that chance had given her this man to listen to and to heed and talk to and to think about.

"I won't touch what you've done, Miss West," he said, smilingly; "but just take a pinch of wax—that way!—and accent that relaxed flank muscle!… Don't be afraid; watch the shape of the shadows… . That's it! Do you see? Never be afraid of dealing vigorously with your subject. Every modification of the first vigorous touch is bound to weaken and sometimes to emasculate… . I don't mean for you to parade crudity and bunches of exaggerated muscle as an ultimate expression of vigour. Only the devotee of the obvious is satisfied with that sort of result; and our exhibitions reek with them. But there is no reason why the satin skin and smooth contour of a naked child shouldn't express virility and vigour—no reason why the flawless delicacy of Venus herself should not, if necessary, express violence unexaggerated and without either distortion or lack of finish."

He glanced across at the dozing cat:

"Under that silky black fur there are bones and fibres and muscles. Don't exaggerate them and call your task finished; merely remember always that they're there framing and padding the velvet skin. More is done by skilful inference than by parading every abstract fact you know and translating the sum-accumulative of your knowledge into the over-accented concrete. Reticence is a kind of vigour. It can even approach violence. The mentally garrulous kill their own inspiration. Inadequacy loves to lump things and gamble with chance for effective results."

He rose, walked over and examined Gladys, touched her contemplatively with the button of his mahl-stick, and listened absently to her responsive purr. Then, palette still in hand, he sat down opposite Valerie, gazing at her in that detached manner which some mistook for indifference:

"There are, I think, two reasons for failure in art," he said, "excess of creative emotion, excess of psychological hair-splitting. The one produces the normal and lovable failures which, decorate our art exhibitions; the other results in those curious products which amuse the public to good-humoured contempt—I mean those pictures full of violent colour laid on in streaks, in great sweeps, in patches, in dots. The painter has turned half theorist, half scientist; the theories of the juxtaposition of colour, and the science of complementary colours, engrosses his attention. He is no longer an artist; he is a chemist and physiologist and an artisan.

"Every now and then there is a revolt from the accepted order of things. New groups form, sometimes damning what they call the artificial lighting of the studio, sometimes exclaiming against the carnival of harmonious or crude colour generally known as 'plein air.' Impressionists scorn the classic, and vice versa. But, Miss West, as a matter of fact, all schools are as good as all religions.

"To speak of studio lighting as artificial and unworthy is silly. It is pretty hard to find anything really artificial in the world, indoors, or out, or even in the glare of the footlights. I think the main idea is that a man should prefer doing what the public calls his work, to any other form of recreation—should use enough reason—not too much—enough inspiration—but watching himself at every brush stroke; and finally should feel physically unfettered—that is, have the a b c, the drudgery, the artisan's part of the work at his finger tips. Then, if he does what makes him happy, whether in a spirit of realism or romanticism, he can safely leave the rest to Fate."

He looked at her, curiously for a moment, then a smile wholly involuntary broke over his face:

"Lord! What a lecture! And you listened to all that nonsense like an angel!"

The dreamy absorption died out in her eyes; she clasped her hands on her knee, looked down, then up at him almost irritably:

"Please go on, Mr. Neville."

"Not much. I've a few stunts to execute aloft there—"

He contemplated her in amused silence, which became more serious:

"You have talent, Miss West. Artistic talent is not unusual among Americans, but patience is. That is one reason why talent accomplishes so little in this country."

"Isn't another reason that patience is too expensive to be indulged in by talent?"

He laughed: "That is perfectly true. The majority of us have to make a living before we know how."

"Did you have to do that?"

"No, I didn't."

"You were fortunate?"

"Yes. I was—perhaps… . I'm not sure."

She touched the lump of green wax gravely, absently. He remained looking at her, busy with his own reflections.

"Would you like to have a chance to study?" he asked.

"Study? What?"

"Sculpture—any old thing! Would you like to try?

"What chance have I for such expensive amusements as study?" she laughed.

"I'll be responsible for you."

"You?"—in blank surprise.

"I'll attend to the material part of it, if you like. I'll see that you can afford the—patience."

"Mr. Neville, I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?" he asked, lazily humorous.

"Do you mean—that you offer me—an opportunity—"

"Yes; an opportunity to exercise patience. It's an offer, Miss West. But I'm perfectly certain you won't take it."

For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, looking fixedly into space. Then she stirred, glanced up, blushed vividly, sprang to her feet and crossed to where he sat.

"I've been considering your offer," she said, striving to speak without effort.

"I'll bet you won't accept it!"

"You win your wager, Mr. Neville."

"I wonder why?" he said with his bantering smile: "but I think I know. Talent in America is seldom intellectually ambitious."

To his amazement and vexation tears sprang to her eyes; she said, biting her lower lip: "My ambition is humble. I care—more than anything in the world—to be of use to—to your career."

Taken completely by surprise he said, "Nonsense," and rose to confront her where she stood wholly charming in her nervous, flushed emotion:

"It isn't nonsense, Mr. Neville; it is my happiness.

"I don't believe you realise what your career means to me. I would not willingly consider anything that might interrupt my humble part in it—in this happy companionship… . After all, happiness is the essential. You said so once. I am happier here than I possibly could be in an isolation where I might perhaps study—learn—" Her voice broke deliciously as he met her gaze in cool, curious disapproval.

"You can't understand it!" she said, flushing almost fiercely. "You can't comprehend what the daily intimacy with a man of your sort has done—is doing for me every moment of my life. How can you understand? You, who have your own place in the world—in life—in this country—in this city! You, who have family, friends, clubs, your social life in city and country, and abroad. Life is very full for you—has always been. But—what I am now learning in contact with you and with the people to whom you have introduced me—is utterly new to me—and—very—pleasant… . I have tasted it; I cannot live without it now."

She drew a deep quick breath, then, looking up at him with a tremulous smile:

"What would you think if I told you that, until Sam took me, I had never even been inside a theatre except when I was engaged by Schindler? It is perfectly true. Mother did not approve. Until I went with John Burleson I had never ever been in a restaurant; until I was engaged by Schindler I had never seen the city lighted at night—I mean where the theatres and cafés and hotels are… . And, Mr. Neville, until I came here to you, I had never had an opportunity to talk to a cultivated man of my own age—I mean the kind of man you are."

She dropped her eyes, considering, while the smile still played faintly with the edges of her lips; then:

"Is it very hard for you to realise that what is an ordinary matter of course to the young of my age is, to me, all a delightful novelty?—that I am enjoying to a perfectly heavenly degree what to you and others may be commonplace and uninteresting? All I ask is to be permitted to enjoy it while I am still young enough. I—I must! I really need it, Mr. Neville. It seems, at moments, as if I could never have enough—after the years—where I had—nothing."

Neville had begun walking to and fro in front of her with the quick, decisive step that characterised his movements; but his restlessness seemed only to emphasise the attention he concentrated on every word she spoke; and, though he merely glanced at her from moment to moment, she was conscious that the man now understood, and was responding more directly to her than ever before in their brief and superficial acquaintance.

"I don't want to go away and study," she said. "It is perfectly dear of you to offer it—I—there is no use in trying to thank you—"

"Valerie!"

"What!" she said, startled by his use of her given name for the first time in their acquaintance.

He said, smilingly grave: "You didn't think there was a string attached to anything I offered?"

"A—a string?"

"Did you?"

She blushed hotly: "No, of course not."

"It's all right then," he nodded; but she began to think of that new idea in a confused, startled, helpless sort of way.

"How could you think that of me?" she faltered.

"I didn't—"

"You—it must have been in your mind—"

"I wanted to be sure it wasn't in yours—"

"You ought to have known! Haven't you learned anything at all about me in two months?"

"Do you think any man can learn anything about anybody in two months?" he asked, lightly.

"Yes, I do. I've learned a good deal about you—enough, anyway, not to attribute anything—unworthy—"

"You silly child; you've learned nothing about me if that's what you think you've discovered."

"I have discovered it!" she retorted, tremulously; "I've learned horrid things about other men, too—and they're not like you!"

"Valerie! Valerie! I'm precisely like all the rest—my selfishness is a little more concentrated than theirs, that's the only difference. For God's sake don't make a god of me."

She sat down on the head of the sofa, looking straight at him, pretty head lowered a trifle so that her gaze was accented by the lovely level of her brows:

"I've long wanted to have a thorough talk with you," she said. "Have you got time now?"

He hesitated, controlling his secret amusement under an anxious gravity as he consulted the clock.

"Suppose you give me an hour on those figures up there? The light will be too poor to work by in another hour. Then we'll have tea and 'thorough talks.'"

"All right," she said, calmly.

He picked up palette and mahl-stick and mounted to his perch on the scaffolding; she walked slowly into the farther room, stood motionless a moment, then raising both arms she began to unhook the collar of her gown.

When she was ready she stepped into her sandals, threw the white wool robe over her body, and tossed one end across her bare shoulder.

He descended, aided her aloft to her own eyrie, walked across the planking to his own, and resumed palette and brushes in excellent humour with himself, talking gaily while he was working:

"I'm devoured by curiosity to know what that 'thorough talk' of yours is going to be about. You and I, in our briefly connected careers, have discussed every subject on earth, gravely or flippantly, and what in the world this 'thorough talk' is going to resemble is beyond me—"

"It might have to do with your lack of ceremony—a few minutes ago," she said, laughing at him.

"My—what?"

"Lack of ceremony. You called me Valerie."

"You can easily revenge that presumption, you know."

"I think I will—Kelly."

He smiled as he painted:

"I don't know why the devil they call me Kelly," he mused. "No episode that I ever heard of is responsible for that Milesian misnomer. Quand même! It sounds prettier from you than it ever did before. I'd rather hear you call me Kelly than Caruso sing my name as Algernon."

"Shall I really call you Kelly?"

"Sure thing! Why not?"

"I don't know. You're rather celebrated—to have a girl call you Kelly."

He puffed out his chest in pretence of pompous satisfaction:

"True, child. Good men are scarce—but the good and great are too nearly extinct for such familiarity. Call me Mr. Kelly."

"I won't. You are only a big boy, anyway—Louis Neville—and sometimes I shall call you Kelly, and sometimes Louis, and very occasionally Mr. Neville."

"All right," he said, absently—"only hold that distractingly ornamental head and those incomparable shoulders a trifle more steady, please—rest solidly on the left leg—let the right hip fall into its natural position—that's it. Thank you."

Holding the pose her eyes wandered from him and his canvas to the evening tinted clouds already edged with deeper gold. Through the sheet of glass above she saw a shred of white fleece in mid-heaven turn to a pale pink.

"I wonder why you asked me to tea?" she mused.

"What?" He turned around to look at her.

"You never before asked me to do such a thing," she said, candidly. "You're an absent-minded man, Mr. Neville."

"It never occurred to me," he retorted, amused. "Tea is weak-minded."

"It occurred to me. That's what part of my 'thorough talk' is to be about; your carelessness in noticing me except professionally."

He continued working, rapidly now; and it seemed to her as though something—a hint of the sombre—had come into his face—nothing definite—but the smile was no longer there, and the brows were slightly knitted.

Later he glanced up impatiently at the sky: the summer clouds wore a deeper rose and gold.

"We'd better have our foolish tea," he said, abruptly, driving his brushes into a bowl of black soap and laying aside his palette for his servant to clean later.

For a while, not noticing her, he fussed about his canvas, using a knife here, a rag there, passing to and fro across the scaffolding, oblivious of the flight of time, until at length the waning light began to prophesy dusk, and he came to himself with a guilty start.

Below, in the studio, Valerie sat, fully dressed except for hat and gloves, head resting in the padded depths of an armchair, watching him in silence.

"I declare," he said, looking down at her contritely, "I never meant to keep you all this time. Good Lord! Have I been puttering up here for an hour and a half! It's nearly eight o'clock! Why on earth didn't you speak to me, Valerie?"

"It's a braver girl than I am who'll venture to interrupt you at work, Kelly," she said, laughingly. "I'm a little afraid of you."

"Nonsense! I wasn't doing anything. My Heaven!—can it be eight o'clock?"

"It is… . You said we were going to have tea."

"Tea! Child, you can't have tea at eight o'clock! I'm terribly sorry"—he came down the ladder, vexed with himself, wiping the paint from his hands with a bunch of cheese cloth—"I'm humiliated and ashamed, Miss West. Wait a moment—"

He walked hastily through the next room into his small suite of apartments, washed his hands, changed his painter's linen blouse for his street coat, and came back into the dim studio.

"I'm really sorry, Valerie," he said. "It was rotten rude of me."

"So am I sorry. It's absurd, but I feel like a perfectly unreasonable kid about it… . You never before asked me—and I—wanted to—stay—so much—"

"Why didn't you remind me, you foolish child!"

"Somehow I couldn't… . I wanted you to think of it."

"Well, I'm a chump… ." He stood before her in the dim light; she still reclined in the armchair, not looking at him, one arm crook'd over her head and the fingers closed tightly over the rosy palm which was turned outward, resting across her forehead.

For a few moments neither spoke; then:

"I'm horridly lonely to-night," she said, abruptly.

"Why, Valerie! What a—an unusual—"

"I want to talk to you… . I suppose you are too hungry to want to talk now."

"N-no, I'm not." He began to laugh: "What's the matter, Valerie? What is on your mind? Have you any serious fidgets, or are you just a spoiled, pretty girl?"

"Spoiled, Kelly. There's nothing really the matter. I just felt like—what you asked me to do—"

She jumped up suddenly, biting her lips with vexation: "I don't know what I'm saying—except that it's rather rude of me—and I've got to go home. Good-night—I think my hat is in the dressing-room—"

He stood uneasily watching her pin it before the mirror; he could just see her profile and the slender, busy hands white in the dusk.

When she returned, slowly drawing on her long gloves, she said to him with composure:

"Some day ask me again. I really would like it—if you would."

"Do you really think that you could stand the excitement of taking a cup of weak tea with me," he said, jestingly—"after all those jolly dinners and suppers and theatres and motor parties that I hear about?"

She nodded and held out her hand with decision:

"Good-night."

He retained her hand a moment, not meaning to—not really intending to ask her what he did ask her. And she raised her velvet eyes gravely:

"Do you really want me?"

"Yes… . I don't know why I never asked you before—"

"It was absurd not to," she said, impulsively; "I'd have gone anywhere with you the first day I ever knew you! Besides, I dress well enough for you not to be ashamed of me."

He began to laugh: "Valerie, you funny little thing! You funny, funny little thing!"

"Not in the slightest," she retorted, sedately. "I'm having a heavenly time for the first time in my life, and I have so wanted you to be part of it … of course you are part of it," she added, hastily—"most of it! I only meant that I—I'd like to be a little in your other life—have you enter mine, a little—just so I can remember, in years to come, an evening with you now and then—to see things going on around us—to hear what you think of things that we see together… . Because, with you, I feel so divinely free, so unembarrassed, so entirely off my guard… . I don't mean to say that I don't have a splendid time with the others even when I have to watch them; I do—and even the watching is fun—"

The child-like audacity and laughing frankness, the confidence of her attitude toward him were delightfully refreshing. He looked into her pretty, eager, engaging face, smiling, captivated.

"Valerie," he said, "tell me something—will you?"

"Yes, if I can."

"I'm more or less of a painting machine. I've made myself so, deliberately—to the exclusion of other interests. I wonder"—he looked at her musingly—"whether I'm carrying it too far for my own good."

"I don't understand."

"I mean—is there anything machine-made about my work? Does it lack—does it lack anything?"

"No!" she said, indignantly loyal. "Why do you ask me that?"

"People—some people say it does lack—a certain quality."

She said with supreme contempt: "You must not believe them. I also hear things—and I know it is an unworthy jealousy that—"

"What have you heard?" he interrupted.

"Absurdities. I don't wish even to think of them—"

"I wish you to. Please. Such things are sometimes significant."

"But—is there any significance in what a few envious artists say—or a few silly models—"

"More significance in what they say than in a whole chorus of professional critics."

"Are you serious?" she asked, astonished.

"Perfectly. Without naming anybody or betraying any confidence, what have you heard in criticism of my work? It's from models and brother painters that the real truth comes—usually distorted, half told, maliciously hinted sometimes—but usually the germ of truth is to be found in what they say, however they may choose to say it."

Valerie leaned back against the door, hands clasped behind her, eyebrows bent slightly inward in an unwilling effort to remember.

Finally she said impatiently: "They don't know what they're talking about. They all say, substantially, the same thing—"

"What is that thing?"

"Why—oh, it's too silly to repeat—but they say there is nothing lovable about your work—that it's inhumanly and coldly perfect—too—too—" she flushed and laughed uncertainly—"'too damn omniscient' is what one celebrated man said. And I could have boxed his large, thin, celebrated ears for him!"

"Go on," he nodded; "what else do they say?"

"Nothing. That's all they can find to say—all they dare say. You know what they are—what other men are—and some of the younger girls, too. Not that I don't like them—and they are very sweet to me—only they're not like you—"

"They're more human. Is that it, Valerie?"

"No, I don't mean that!"

"Yes, you do. You mean that the others take life in a perfectly human manner—find enjoyment, amusement in each other, in a hundred things outside of their work. They act like men and women, not like a painting machine; if they experience impulses and emotions they don't entirely stifle 'em. They have time and leisure to foregather, laugh, be silly, discuss, banter, flirt, make love, and cut up all the various harmless capers that humanity is heir to. That's what you mean, but you don't realise it. And you think, and they think, that my solemn and owlish self-suppression is drying me up, squeezing out of me the essence of that warm, lovable humanity in which, they say, my work is deficient. They say, too, that my inspiration is lacking in that it is not founded on personal experience; that I have never known any deep emotion, any suffering, any of the sterner, darker regrets—anything of that passion which I sometimes depict. They say that the personal and convincing element is totally absent because I have not lived"—he laughed—"and loved; that my work lacks the one thing which only the self-knowledge of great happiness and great pain can lend to it… . And—I think they are right, Valerie. What do you think?"

The girl stood silent, with lowered eyes, reflecting for a moment. Then she looked up curiously.

"Have you never been very unhappy?"

"I had a toothache once."

She said, unsmiling: "Haven't you ever suffered mentally?"

"No—not seriously. Oh, I've regretted little secret meannesses—bad temper, jealousy—"

"Nothing else? Have you never experienced deep unhappiness—through death, for example?"

"No, thank God. My father and mother and sister are living… . It is rather strange," he added, partly to himself, "that the usual troubles and sorrows have so far passed me by. I am twenty-seven; there has never been a death in my family, or among my intimate friends."

"Have you any intimate friends?"

"Well—perhaps not—in the strict sense. I don't confide."

"Have you never cared, very much, for anybody—any woman?"

"Not sentimentally," he returned, laughing. "Do you think that a good course of modern flirtation—a thorough schooling in the old-fashioned misfortunes of true love would inject into my canvases that elusively occult quality they're all howling for?"

She remained smilingly silent.

"Perhaps something less strenuous would do," he said, mischievously—"a pretty amourette?—just one of those gay, frivolous, Louis XV affairs with some daintily receptive girl, not really improper, but only ultra fashionable. Do you think that would help some, Valerie?"

She raised her eyes, still smiling, a little incredulous, very slightly embarrassed:

"I don't think your painting requires any such sacrifices of you, Mr. Neville… . Are you going to take me somewhere to dinner? I'm dreadfully hungry."

"You poor little girl, of course I am. Besides, you must be suffering under the terrible suppression of that 'thorough talk' which you—"

"It doesn't really require a thorough talk," she said; "I'll tell you now what I had to say. No, don't interrupt, please! I want to—please let me—so that nothing will mar our enjoyment of each other and of the gay world around us when we are dining… . It is this: Sometimes—once in a while—I become absurdly lonely, which makes me a fool, temporarily. And—will you let me telephone you at such times?—just to talk to you—perhaps see you for a minute?"

"Of course. You know my telephone number. Call me up whenever you like."

"Could I see you at such moments? I—there's a—some—a kind of sentiment about me—when I'm very lonely; and I've been foolish enough to let one or two men see it—in fact I've been rather indiscreet—silly—with a man—several men—now and then. A lonely girl is easily sympathised with—and rather likes it; and is inclined to let herself go a little… . I don't want to… . And at times I've done it… . Sam Ogilvy nearly kissed me, which really doesn't count—does it? But I let Harry Annan do it, once… . If I'm weak enough to drift into such silliness I'd better find a safeguard. I've been thinking—thinking—that it really does originate in a sort of foolish loneliness … not in anything worse. So I thought I'd have a thorough talk with you about it. I'm twenty-one—with all my experience of life and of men crowded into a single winter and spring. I have as friends only the few people I have met through you. I have nobody to see unless I see them—nowhere to go unless I go where they ask me… . So I thought I'd ask you to let me depend a little on you, sometimes—as a refuge from isolation and morbid thinking now and then. And from other mischief—for which I apparently have a capacity—to judge by what I've done—and what I've let men do already."

She laid her hand lightly on his arm in sudden and impulsive confidence:

"That's my 'thorough talk.' I haven't any one else to tell it to. And I've told you the worst." She smiled at him adorably: "And now I am ready to go out with you," she said,—"go anywhere in the world with you, Kelly. And I am going to be perfectly happy—if you are."

Chapter 3

 

One day toward the middle of June Valerie did not arrive on time at the studio. She had never before been late.

About two o'clock Sam Ogilvy sauntered in, a skull pipe in his mouth, his hair rumpled:

"It's that damn mermaid of mine," he said, "can't you come up and look at her and tell me what's the trouble, Kelly?"

"Not now. Who's posing?"

"Rita. She's in a volatile humour, too—fidgets; denies fidgeting; reproaches me for making her keep quiet; says I draw like a bum chimney—no wonder my work's rotten! Besides, she's in a tub of water, wearing that suit of fish-scales I had made for Violet Cliland, and she says it's too tight and she's tired of the job, anyway. Fancy my mental condition."

"Oh, she won't throw you down. Rita is a good sport," said Neville.

"I hope so. It's an important picture. Really, Kelly, it's great stuff—a still, turquoise-tinted pool among wet rocks; ebb tide; a corking little mermaid caught in a pool left by the receding waves—all tones and subtle values," he declared, waving his arm.

"Don't paint things in the air with your thumb," said Neville, coldly. "No wonder Rita is nervous."

"Rita is nervous," said Ogilvy, "because she's been on a bat and supped somewhere until the coy and rosy dawn chased her homeward. And your pretty paragon, Miss West, was with the party—"

"What?" said Neville, sharply.

"Sure thing! Harry Annan, Rita, Burleson, Valerie—and I don't know who else. They feasted somewhere east of Coney—where the best is like the würst—and ultimately became full of green corn, clams, watermelon, and assorted fidgets… . Can't you come up and look at my picture?"

Neville got up, frowning, and followed Ogilvy upstairs.

Rita Tevis, swathed in a blanket from which protruded a dripping tinselled fish's tail, sat disconsolately on a chair, knitting a red-silk necktie for some party of the second part, as yet unidentified.

"Mr. Neville," she said, "Sam has been quarrelling with me every minute while I'm doing my best in that horrid tub of water. If anybody thinks it's a comfortable pose, let them try it! I wish—I wish I could have the happiness of seeing Sam afloat in this old fish-scale suit with every spangle sticking into him and his legs cramped into this unspeakable tail!"

She extended a bare arm, shook hands, pulled up her blanket wrap, and resumed her knitting with a fierce glance at Ogilvy, who had attempted an appealing smile.

Neville stood stock-still before the canvas. The picture promised well; it was really beautiful—the combined result of several outdoor studies now being cleverly worked up. But Ogilvy's pictures never kept their promise.

"Also," observed Rita, reproachfully, "I posed en plein air for those rainbow sketches of his—and though it was a lonely cove with a cunningly secluded little crescent beach, I was horribly afraid of somebody coming—and besides I got most cruelly sun-burned—"

"Rita! You said you enjoyed that excursion!" exclaimed Ogilvy, with pathos.

"I said it to flatter that enormous vanity of yours, Sam. I had a perfectly wretched time."

"What sort of a time did you have last evening?" inquired Neville, turning from the picture.

"Horrid. Everybody ate too much, and Valerie spooned with a new man—I don't remember his name. She went out in a canoe with him and they sang 'She kissed him on the gangplank when the boat moved out.'"

Neville, silent, turned to the picture once more. In a low rapid voice he indicated to Ogilvy where matters might be differently treated, stepped back a few paces, nodded decisively, and turned again to Rita:

"I've been waiting for Miss West," he said. "Have you any reason to think that she might not keep her appointment this morning?"

"She had a headache when we got home," said Rita. "She stayed with me last night. I left her asleep. Why don't you ring her up. You know my number."

"All right," said Neville, shortly, and went out.

When he first tried to ring her up the wire was busy. It was a party wire, yet a curious uneasiness set him pacing the studio, smoking, brows knitted, until he decided it was time to try again.

This time he recognised her distant voice: "Hello—hello! Is that you, Mr. Neville?"

"Valerie!"

"Oh, it is you, Kelly? I hoped you would call me up. I knew it must be you!"

"Yes, it is. What the deuce is the matter? Are you ill?"

"Oh, dear, no.'"

"What, then?"

"I was so sleepy, Kelly. Please forgive me. We had such a late party—and it was daylight before I went to bed. Please forgive me; won't you?"

"When I called you a few minutes ago your wire was busy. Were you conversing?"

"Yes. I was talking to José Querida."

"H'm!"

"José was with us last evening… . I went canoeing with him. He just called me up to ask how I felt."

"Hunh!"

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Are you annoyed, Louis?"

"No!"

"Oh, I thought it sounded as though you were irritated. I am so ashamed at having overslept. Who told you I was here? Oh, Rita, I suppose. Poor child, she was more faithful than I. The alarm clock woke her and she was plucky enough to get up—and I only yawned and thought of you, and I was so sleepy! Are you sure you do forgive me?"

"Of course."

"You don't say it very kindly."

"I mean it cordially," he snapped. He could hear her sigh: "I suppose you do." Then she added:

"I am dressing, Kelly. I don't wish for any breakfast, and I'll come to the studio as soon as I can—"

"Take your breakfast first!"

"No, I really don't care for—"

"All right. Come ahead."

"I will. Good-bye, Kelly, dear."

He rang off, picked up the telephone again, called the great Hotel Regina, and ordered breakfast sent to his studio immediately.

When Valerie arrived she found silver, crystal, and snowy linen awaiting her with chilled grapefruit, African melon, fragrant coffee, toast, and pigeon's eggs poached on Astrakan caviar.

"Oh, Louis!" she exclaimed, enraptured; "I don't deserve this—but it is perfectly dear of you—and I am hungry!… Good-morning," she added, shyly extending a fresh cool hand; "I am really none the worse for wear you see."

That was plain enough. In her fresh and youthful beauty the only sign of the night's unwisdom was in the scarcely perceptible violet tint under her thick lashes. Her skin was clear and white and dewy fresh, her dark eyes unwearied—her gracefully slender presence fairly fragrant with health and vigour.

She seated herself—offered to share with him in dumb appeal, urged him in delicious pantomime, and smiled encouragingly as he reluctantly found a chair beside her and divided the magnificent melon.

"Did you have a good time?" he asked, trying not to speak ungraciously.

"Y-yes… . It was a silly sort of a time."

"Silly?"

"I was rather sentimental—with Querida."

He said nothing—grimly.

"I told you last night, Louis. Why couldn't you see me?"

"I was dining out; I couldn't."

She sipped her chilled grapefruit meditatively:

"I hadn't seen you for a week," she laughed, glancing sideways at him, "and that lonely feeling began about five o'clock; and I called you up at seven because I couldn't stand it… . But you wouldn't see me; and so when Rita and the others came in a big touring car—do you blame me very much for going with them?"

"No."

Her expression became serious, a trifle appealing:

"My room isn't very attractive," she said, timidly. "It is scarcely big enough for the iron bed and one chair—and I get so tired trying to read or sew every evening by the gas—and it's very hot in there."

"Are you making excuses for going?"

"I do not know… . Unless people ask me, I have nowhere to go except to my room; and when a girl sits there evening after evening alone it—it is not very gay."

She tried the rich, luscious melon with much content, and presently her smile came back:

"Louis, it was a funny party. To begin we had one of those terrible clambakes—like a huge, horrid feast of the Middle Ages—and it did not agree with everybody—or perhaps it was because we weren't middle-aged—or perhaps it was just the beer. I drank water; so did the beautiful José Querida… . I think he is pretty nearly the handsomest man I ever saw; don't you?"

"He's handsome, cultivated, a charming conversationalist, and a really great painter," said Neville, drily.

She looked absently at the melon; tasted it: "He is very romantic … when he laughs and shows those beautiful, even teeth… . He's really quite adorable, Kelly—and so gentle and considerate—"

"That's the Latin in him."

"His parents were born in New York."

She sipped her coffee, tried a pigeon egg, inquired what it was, ate it, enchanted.

"How thoroughly nice you always are to me, Kelly!" she said, looking up in the engagingly fearless way characteristic of her when with him.

"Isn't everybody nice to you?" he said with a shrug which escaped her notice.

"Nice?" She coloured a trifle and laughed. "Not in your way, Kelly. In the sillier sense they are—some of them."

"Even Querida?" he said, carelessly.

"Oh, just like other men—generously ready for any event. What self-sacrificing opportunists men are! After all, Kelly," she added, slipping easily into the vernacular, "it's always up to the girl."

"Is it?"

"Yes, I think so. I knew perfectly well that I had no business to let Querida's arm remain around me. But—there was a moon, Kelly."

"Certainly."

"Why do you say 'certainly'?"

"Because there was one."

"But you say it in a manner—" She hesitated, continued her breakfast in leisurely reflection for a while, then:

"Louis?"

"Yes."

"Am I too frank with you?"

"Why?"

"I don't know; I was just thinking. I tell you pretty nearly everything. If I didn't have you to tell—have somebody—" She considered, with brows slightly knitted—"if I didn't have somebody to talk to, it wouldn't be very good for me. I realise that."

"You need a grandmother," he said, drily; "and I'm the closest resemblance to one procurable."

The imagery struck her as humorous and she laughed.

"Poor Kelly," she said aloud to herself, "he is used and abused and imposed upon, and in revenge he offers his ungrateful tormentor delicious breakfasts. What shall his reward be?—or must he await it in Paradise where he truly belongs amid the martyrs and the blessed saints!"

Neville grunted.

"Oh, oh! such a post-Raphaelite scowl! Job won't bow to you when you go aloft, Kelly. Besides, polite martyrs smile pleasantly while enduring torment… . What are you going to do with me to-day?" she added, glancing around with frank curiosity at an easel which was set with a full-length virgin canvas.

"Portrait," he replied, tersely.

"Oh," she said, surprised. He had never before painted her clothed.

From moment to moment, as she leisurely breakfasted, she glanced around at the canvas, interested in the new idea of his painting her draped; a trifle perplexed, too.

"Louis," she said, "I don't quite see how you're ever going to find a purchaser for just a plain portrait of me."

He said, irritably: "I don't have to work for a living every minute, do I? For Heaven's sake give me a day off to study."

"But—it seems like wasted time—"

"What is wasted time?"

"Why just to paint a portrait of me as I am. Isn't it?" She looked up smilingly, perfectly innocent of any self-consciousness. "In the big canvases for the Byzantine Theatre you always made my features too radiant, too glorious for portraits. It seems rather a slump to paint me as I am—just a girl in street clothes."

A singular expression passed over his face.

"Yes," he said, after a moment—"just a girl in street clothes. No clouds, no sky, no diaphanous draperies of silk; no folds of cloth of gold; no gemmed girdles, no jewels. Nothing of the old glamour, the old glory; no sunburst laced with mist; no 'light that never was on sea or land.' … Just a young girl standing in the half light of my studio… . And by God!—if I can not do it—the rest is worthless."

Amazed at his tone and expression she turned quickly, set back her cup, remained gazing at him, bewildered by the first note of bitterness she had ever heard in his voice.

He had risen and walked to his easel, back partly turned. She saw him fussing with his palette, colours, and brushes, watched him for a few moments, then she went away into the farther room where she had a glass shelf to herself with toilet requisites—a casual and dainty gift from him.

When she returned he was still bending over his colour-table; and she walked up and laid her hand on his shoulder—not quite understanding why she did it.

He straightened up to his full stature, surprised, turning his head to meet a very clear, very sweetly disturbed gaze.

"Kelly, dear, are you unhappy?"

"Why—no."

"You seem to be a little discontented."

"I hope I am. It's a healthy sign."

"Healthy?"

"Certainly. The satisfied never get anywhere… . That Byzanite business has begun to wear on my nerves."

"Thousands and thousands of people have gone to see it, and have praised it. You know what the papers have been saying—"

Under her light hand she felt the impatient movement of his shoulders, and her hand fell away.

"Don't you care for it, now that it's finished?" she asked, wondering.

"I'm devilish sick of it," he said, so savagely that every nerve in her recoiled with a tiny shock. She remained silent, motionless, awaiting his pleasure. He set his palette, frowning. She had never before seen him like this.

After a while she said, quietly: "If you are waiting for me, please tell me what you expect me to do, because I don't know, Kelly."

"Oh, just stand over there," he said, vaguely; "just walk about and stop anywhere when you feel like stopping."

She walked a few steps at hazard, partly turned to look back at him with a movement adorable in its hesitation.

"Don't budge!" he said, brusquely.

"Am I to remain like this?"

"Exactly."

He picked up a bit of white chalk, went over to her, knelt down, and traced on the floor the outline of her shoes.

Then he went back, and, with his superbly cool assurance, began to draw with his brush upon the untouched canvas.

From where she stood, and as far as she could determine, he seemed, however, to work less rapidly than usual—with a trifle less decision—less precision. Another thing she noticed; the calm had vanished from his face. The vivid animation, the cool self-confidence, the half indolent relapse into careless certainty—all familiar phases of the man as she had so often seen him painting—were now not perceptible. There seemed to be, too, a curious lack of authority about his brush strokes at intervals—moments of grave perplexity, indecision almost resembling the hesitation of inexperience—and for the first time she saw in his gray eyes the narrowing concentration of mental uncertainty.

It seemed to her sometimes as though she were looking at a total stranger. She had never thought of him as having any capacity for the ordinary and lesser ills, vanities, and vexations—the trivial worries that beset other artists.

"Louis?" she said, full of curiosity.

"What?" he demanded, ungraciously.

"You are not one bit like yourself to-day."

He made no comment. She ventured again:

"Do I hold the pose properly?"

"Yes, thanks," he said, absently.

"May I talk?"

"I'd rather you didn't, Valerie, just at present."

"All right," she rejoined, cheerfully; but her pretty eyes watched him very earnestly, a little troubled.

When she was tired the pose ended; that had been their rule; but long after her neck and back and thighs and limbs begged for relief, she held the pose, reluctant to interrupt him. When at last she could endure it no longer she moved; but her right leg had lost not only all sense of feeling but all power to support her; and down she came with a surprised and frightened little exclamation—and he sprang to her and swung her to her feet again.

"Valerie! You bad little thing! Don't you know enough to stop when you're tired?"

"I—didn't know I was so utterly gone," she said, bewildered.

He passed his arm around her and supported her to the sofa where she sat, demure, a little surprised at her collapse, yet shyly enjoying his disconcerted attentions to her.

"It's your fault, Kelly. You had such a queer expression—not at all like you—that I tried harder than ever to help you—and fell down for my pains."

"You're an angel," he said, contritely, "but a silly one."

"A scared one, Kelly—and a fallen one." She laughed, flexing the muscles of her benumbed leg: "Your expression intimidated me. I didn't recognise you; I could not form any opinion of what was going on inside that very stern and frowning head of yours. If you look like that I'll never dare call you Kelly."

"Did I seem inhuman?"

"N-no. On the contrary—very human—ordinary—like the usual ill-tempered artist man, with whom I have learned how to deal. You know," she added, teasingly, "that you are calm and god-like, usually—and when you suddenly became a mere mortal—"

"I'll tell you what I'll do with you," he said; "I'll pick you up and put you to bed."

"I wish you would, Kelly. I haven't had half enough sleep."

He sat down beside her on the sofa: "Don't talk any more of that god-like business," he growled, "or I'll find the proper punishment."

"Would you punish me, Kelly?"

"I sure would."

"If I displeased you?"

"You bet."

"Really?" She turned partly toward him, half in earnest. "Suppose—suppose—" but she stopped suddenly, with a light little laugh that lingered pleasantly in the vast, still room.

She said: "I begin to think that there are two Kellys—no, one Kelly and one Louis. Kelly is familiar to me; I seem to have known him all my life—the happy part of my life. Louis I have just seen for the first time—there at the easel, painting, peering from me to his canvas with Kelly's good-looking eyes all narrow with worry—"

"What on earth are you chattering about, Valerie?"

"You and Kelly… . I don't quite know which I like best—the dear, sweet, kind, clever, brilliant, impersonal, god-like Kelly, or this new Louis—so very abrupt in speaking to me—"

"Valerie, dear! Forgive me. I'm out of sorts somehow. It began—I don't know—waiting for you—wondering if you could be ill—all alone. Then that ass, Sam Ogilvy—oh, it's just oversmoking I guess, or—I don't know what."

She sat regarding him, head tipped unconsciously on one side in an attitude suggesting a mind concocting malice.

"Louis?"

"What?"

"You're very attractive when you're god-like—"

"You little wretch!"

"But—you're positively dangerous when you're human."

"Valerie! I'll—"

"The great god Kelly, or the fascinating, fearsome, erring Louis! Which is it to be? I've an idea that the time is come to decide!"

Fairly radiating a charming aura of malice she sat back, nursing one knee, distractingly pretty and defiant, saying: "I will call you a god if I like!"

"I'll tell you what, Valerie," he said, half in earnest; "I've played grandmother to you long enough, by Heck!"

"Oh, Kelly, be lofty and Olympian! Be a god and shame the rest of us!"

"I'll shamefully resemble one of 'em in another moment if you continue tormenting me!"

"Which one, great one?"

"Jupiter, little lady. He was the boss philanderer you know."

"What is a philanderer, my Olympian friend?"

"Oh, one of those Olympian divinities who always began the day by kissing the girls all around."

"Before breakfast?"

"Certainly."

"It's—after breakfast, Kelly."

"Luncheon and dinner still impend."

"Besides—I'm not a bit lonely to-day… . I'm afraid I wouldn't let you, Kel—I mean Louis."

"Why didn't you say 'Kelly'?"

"Kelly is too god-like to kiss."

"Oh! So that's the difference! Kelly isn't human; Louis is."

"Kelly, to me," she admitted, "is practically kissless… . I haven't thought about Louis in that regard."

"Consider the matter thoroughly."

"Do you wish me to?" She bent her head, smiling. Then, looking up with enchanting audacity:

"I really don't know, Mr. Neville. Some day when I'm lonely—and if Louis is at home and Kelly is out—you and I might spend an evening together on a moonlit lake and see how much of a human being Louis can be."

She laughed, watching him under the dark lashes, charming mouth mocking him in every curve.

"Do you think you're likely to be lonely to-night?" he asked, surprised at the slight acceleration of his pulses.

"No, I don't. Besides, you'd be only the great god Kelly to me this evening. Besides that I'm going to dinner with Querida, and afterward we're going to see the 'Joy of the Town' at the Folly Theatre."

"I didn't know," he said, curtly. For a few moments he sat there, looking interestedly at a familiar door-knob. Then rising: "Do you feel all right for posing?"

"Yes."

"Alors—"

"Allons, mon dieu!" she laughed.

Work began. She thought, watching him with sudden and unexpected shyness, that he seemed even more aloof, more preoccupied, more worried, more intent than before. In this new phase the man she had known as a friend was now entirely gone, vanished! Here stood an utter stranger, very human, very determined, very deeply perplexed, very much in earnest. Everything about this man was unknown to her. There seemed to be nothing about him that particularly appealed to her confidence, either; yet the very uncertainty was interesting her now—intensely.

This other phase of his dual personality had been so completely a surprise that, captivated, curious, she could keep neither her gaze from him nor her thoughts. Was it that she was going to miss in him the other charm, lose the delight in his speech, his impersonal and kindly manner, miss the comfortable security she had enjoyed with him, perhaps after some half gay, half sentimental conflict with lesser men?

What was she to expect from this brand-new incarnation of Louis Neville? The delightful indifference, fascinating absent-mindedness and personal neglect of the other phase? Would he be god enough to be less to her, now? Man enough to be more than other men? For a moment she had a little shrinking, a miniature panic lest this man turn too much like other men. But she let her eyes rest on him, and knew he would not. Whatever Protean changes might yet be reserved for her to witness, she came to the conclusion that this man was a man apart, different, and would not disappoint her no matter what he turned into.

She thought to herself: "If I want Kelly to lean on, he'll surely appear, god-like, impersonally nice, and kindly as ever; if I want Louis to torment and provoke and flirt with—a little—a very little—I'm quite sure he'll come, too. Whatever else is contained in Mr. Neville I don't know; but I like him separately and compositely, and I'm happy when I'm with him."

With which healthy conclusion she asked if she might rest, and came around to look at the canvas.

As she had stood in silence for some time, he asked her, a little nervously, what she thought of it.

"Louis—I don't know."

"Is your opinion unfavourable?"

"N-no. I am like that, am I not?"

"In a shadowy way. It will be like you."

"Am I as—interesting?"

"More so," he said.

"Are you going to make me—beautiful?"

"Yes—or cut this canvas into shreds."

"Oh-h!" she exclaimed with a soft intake of breath; "would you have the heart to destroy me after you've made me?"

"I don't know what I'd do, Valerie. I never felt just this way about anything. If I can't paint you—a human, breathing you—with all of you there on the canvas—all of you, soul, mind, and body—all of your beauty, your youth, your sadness, happiness—your errors, your nobility—you, Valerie!—then there's no telling what I'll do."

She said nothing. Presently she resumed the pose and he his painting.

It became very still in the sunny studio.

Chapter 4

 

In that month of June, for the first time in his deliberately active career, Neville experienced a disinclination to paint. And when he realised that it was disinclination, it appalled him. Something—he didn't understand what—had suddenly left him satiated—and with all the uneasiness and discontent of satiation he forced matters until he could force no further.

He had commissions, several, and valuable; and let them lie. For the first time in all his life the blank canvas of an unexecuted commission left him untempted, unresponsive, weary.

He had, also, his portrait of Valerie to continue. He continued it mentally, at intervals; but for several days, now, he had not laid a brush to it.

"It's funny," he said to Querida, going out on the train to his sister's country home one delicious morning—"it's confoundedly odd that I should turn lazy in my old age. Do you think I'm worked out?" He gulped down a sudden throb of fear smilingly.

"Lie fallow," said Querida, gently. "No soil is deep enough to yield without rest."

"Yours does."

"Oh, for me," said Querida, showing his snowy teeth, "I often sicken of my fat sunlight, frying everything to an iridescent omelette." He shrugged, laughed: "I turn lazy for months every year. Try it, my friend. Don't you even keep mi-carême?"

Neville stared out of the window at the station platform past which they were gliding, and rose with Querida as the train stopped. His sister's touring car was waiting; into it stepped Querida, and he followed; and away they sped over the beautiful rolling country, where handsome cattle tried to behave like genuine Troyon's, and silvery sheep attempted to imitate Mauve, and even the trees, separately or in groups, did their best to look like sections of Rousseau, Diaz, and even Corot—but succeeded only in resembling questionable imitations.

"There's to be quite a week-end party?" inquired Querida.

"I don't know. My sister telephoned me to fill in. I fancy the party is for you."

"For me!" exclaimed Querida with delightful enthusiasm. "That is most charming of Mrs. Collis."

"They'll all think it charming of you. Lord, what a rage you've become and what a furor you've aroused!… And you deserve it," added Neville, coolly.

Querida looked at him, calm intelligence in his dark gaze; and understood the honesty of the comment.

"That," he said, "if you permit the vigour of expression, is damn nice of you, Neville. But you can afford to be generous to other painters."

"Can I?" Neville turned and gazed at Querida, gray eyes clear in their searching inquiry. Then he laughed a little and looked out over the sunny landscape.

Querida's olive cheeks had reddened a trifle.

Neville said: "What is the trouble with my work, anyway? Is it what some of you fellows say?"

Querida did not pretend to misunderstand:

"You're really a great painter, Neville. And you know it. Must you have everything?"

"Well—I'm going after it."

"Surely—surely. I, also. God knows my work lacks many, many things—"

"But it doesn't lack that one essential which mine lacks. What is it?"

Querida laughed: "I can't explain. For me—your Byzantine canvas—there is in it something not intimate—"

"Austere?"

"Yes—even in those divine and lovely throngs. There is, perhaps, an aloofness—even a self-denial—" He laughed again: "I deny myself nothing—on canvas—even I have the audacity to try to draw as you do!"

Neville sat thinking, watching the landscape speed away on either side in a running riot of green.

"Self-denial—too much of it—separates you from your kind," said Querida. "The solitary fasters are never personally pleasant; hermits are the world's public admiration and private abomination. Oh, the good world dearly loves to rub elbows with a talented sinner and patronise him and sentimentalise over him—one whose miracles don't hurt their eyes enough to blind them to the pleasant discovery that his halo is tarnished in spots and needs polishing, and that there's a patch on the seat of his carefully creased toga."

Neville laughed. Presently he said: "Until recently I've cherished theories. One of 'em was to subordinate everything in life to the enjoyment of a single pleasure—the pleasure of work… . I guess experience is putting that theory on the blink."

"Surely. You might as well make an entire meal of one favourite dish. For a day you could stand it, even like it, perhaps. After that—" he shrugged.

"But—I'd rather spend my time painting—if I could stand the diet."

"Would you? I don't know what I'd rather do. I like almost everything. It makes me paint better to talk to a pretty woman, for example. To kiss her inspires a masterpiece."

"Does it?" said Neville, thoughtfully.

"Of course. A week or two of motoring—riding, dancing, white flannel idleness—all these I adore. And," tapping his carefully pinned lilac tie—"inside of me I know that every pleasant experience, every pleasure I offer myself, is going to make me a better painter!"

"Experience," repeated the other.

"By all means and every means—experience in pleasure, in idleness, in love, in sorrow—but experience!—always experience, by hook or by crook, and at any cost. That is the main idea, Neville—my main idea—like the luscious agglomeration of juicy green things which that cow is eating; they all go to make good milk. Bah!—that's a stupid simile," he added, reddening.

Neville laughed. Presently he pointed across the meadows.

"Is that your sister's place?" asked Querida with enthusiasm, interested and disappointed. "What a charming house!"

"That is Ashuelyn, my sister's house. Beyond is El Naúar, Cardemon's place… . Here we are."

The small touring car stopped; the young men descended to a grassy terrace where a few people in white flannels had gathered after breakfast. A slender woman, small of bone and built like an undeveloped girl, came forward, the sun shining on her thick chestnut hair.

"Hello, Lily," said Neville.

"Hello, Louis. Thank you for coming, Mr. Querida—it is exceedingly nice of you to come—" She gave him her firm, cool hand, smiled on him with unfeigned approval, turned and presented him to the others—Miss Aulne, Miss Swift, Miss Annan, a Mr. Cameron, and, a moment later, to her husband, Gordon Collis, a good-looking, deeply sun-burned young man whose only passion, except his wife and baby, was Ashuelyn, the home of his father.

But it was a quiet passion which bored nobody, not even his wife.

When conversation became general, with Querida as the centre around which it eddied, Neville, who had seated himself on the gray stone parapet near his sister, said in a low voice:

"Well, how goes it, Lily?"

"All right," she replied with boyish directness, but in the same low tone. "Mother and father have spent a week with us. You saw them in town?"

"Of course. I'll run up to Spindrift House to see them as often as I can this summer… . How's the kid?"

"Fine. Do you want to see him?"

"Yes, I'd like to."

His sister caught his hand, jumped up, and led him into the house to the nursery where a normal and in nowise extraordinary specimen of infancy reposed in a cradle, pink with slumber, one thumb inserted in its mouth.

"Isn't he a wonder," murmured Neville, venturing to release the thumb.

The young mother bent over, examining her offspring in all the eloquent silence of pride unutterable. After a little while she said: "I've got to feed him. Go back to the others, Louis, and say I'll be down after a while."

He sauntered back through the comfortable but modest house, glancing absently about him on his way to the terrace, nodding to familiar faces among the servants, stopping to inspect a sketch of his own which he had done long ago and which his sister loved and he hated.

"Rotten," he murmured—"it has an innocence about it that is actually more offensive than stupidity."

On the terrace Stephanie Swift came over to him:

"Do you want a single at tennis, Louis? The others are hot for Bridge—except Gordon Collis—and he is going to dicker with a farmer over some land he wants to buy."

Neville looked at the others:

"Do you mean to say that you people are going to sit here all hunched up around a table on a glorious day like this?"

"We are," said Alexander Cameron, calmly breaking the seal of two fresh, packs. "You artists have nothing to do for a living except to paint pretty models, and when the week end comes you're in fine shape to caper and cut up didoes. But we business men are too tired to go galumphing over the greensward when Saturday arrives. It's a wicker chair and a 'high one,' and peaceful and improving cards for ours."

Alice Annan laughed and glanced at Querida degrees Cameron's idea was her idea of what her brother Harry was doing for a living; but she wasn't sure that Querida would think it either flattering or humorous.

But Jose Querida laughed, too, saying: "Quite right, Mr. Cameron. It's only bluff with, us; we never work. Life is one continual comic opera."

"It's a cinch," murmured Cameron. "Stocks and bonds are exciting, but your business puts it all over us. Nobody would have to drive me to business every morning if there was a pretty model in a cosey studio awaiting me."

"Sandy, you're rather horrid," said Miss Aulne, watching him sort out the jokers from the new packs and, with a skilful flip, send them scaling out, across the grass, for somebody to pick up.

Cameron said: "How about this Trilby business, anyway, Miss Annan? You have a brother in it. Is the world of art full of pretty models clad in ballet skirts—when they wear anything? Is it all one mad, joyous melange of high-brow conversation discreetly peppered with low-brow revelry? Yes? No? Inform an art lover, please—as they say in the Times Saturday Review."

"I don't know," said Miss Annan, laughing. "Harry never has anybody interesting in the studio when he lets me take tea there."

Rose Aulne said: "I saw some photographs of a very beautiful girl in Sam Ogilvy's studio—a model. What is her name, Alice?—the one Sam and Harry are always raving over?"

"They call her Valerie, I believe."

"Yes, that's the one—Valerie West, isn't it? Is it, Louis? You know her, of course."

Neville nodded coolly.

"Introduce me," murmured Cameron, spreading a pack for cutting. "Perhaps she'd like to see the Stock Exchange when I'm at my best."

"Is she such a beauty? Do you know her, too, Mr. Querida?" asked Rose Aulne.

Querida laughed: "I do. Miss West is a most engaging, most amiable and cultivated girl, and truly very beautiful."

"Oh! They are sometimes educated?" asked Stephanie, surprised.

"Sometimes they are even equipped to enter almost any drawing-room in New York. It doesn't always require the very highest equipment to do that," he added, laughing.

"That sounds like romantic fiction," observed Alice Annan. "You are a poet, Mr. Querida."

"Oh, it's not often a girl like Valerie West crosses our path. I admit that. Now and then such a comet passes across our sky—or is reported. I never before saw any except this one."

"If she's as much of a winner as all that," began Cameron with decision, "I want to meet her immediately—"

"Mere brokers are out of it," said Alice… . "Cut, please."

Rose Aulne said: "If you painters only knew it, your stupid studio teas would be far more interesting if you'd have a girl like this Valerie West to pour for you … and for us to see."

"Yes," added Alice; "but they're a vain lot. They think we are unsophisticated enough to want to go to their old studios and be perfectly satisfied to look at their precious pictures, and listen to their art patter. I've told Harry that what we want is to see something of the real studio life; and he tries to convince me that it's about as exciting as a lawyer's life when he dictates to his stenographer."

"Is it?" asked Stephanie of Neville.

"Just about as exciting. Some few business men may smirk at their stenographers; some few painters may behave in the same way to their models. I fancy it's the exception to the rule in any kind of business—isn't it, Sandy?"

"Certainly," said Cameron, hastily. "I never winked at my stenographer—never! never! Will you deal, Mr. Querida?" he asked, courteously.

"I should think a girl like that would be interesting to know," said Lily Collis, who had come up behind her brother and Stephanie Swift and stood, a hand on each of their shoulders, listening and looking on at the card game.

"That is what I wanted to say, too," nodded Stephanie. "I'd like to meet a really nice girl who is courageous enough, and romantic enough to pose for artists—"

"You mean poor enough, don't you?" said Neville. "They don't do it because it's romantic."

"It must be romantic work."

"It isn't, I assure you. It's drudgery—and sometimes torture."

Stephanie laughed: "I believe it's easy work and a gay existence full of romance. Don't undeceive me, Louis. And I think you're selfish not to let us meet your beautiful Valerie at tea."

"Why not?" added his sister. "I'd like to see her myself."

"Oh, Lily, you know perfectly well that oil and water don't mix," he said with a weary shrug.

"I suppose we're the oil," remarked Rose Aulne—"horrid, smooth, insinuating stuff. And his beautiful Valerie is the clear, crystalline, uncontaminated fountain of inspiration."

Lily Collis dropped her hands from Stephanie's and her brother's shoulders:

"Do ask us to tea to meet her, Louis," she coaxed.

"We've never seen a model—"

"Do you want me to exhibit a sensitive girl as a museum freak?" he asked, impatiently.

"Don't you suppose we know how to behave toward her? Really, Louis, you—"

"Probably you know how to behave. And I can assure you that she knows perfectly well how to behave toward anybody. But that isn't the question. You want to see her out of curiosity. You wouldn't make a friend of her—or even an acquaintance. And I tell you, frankly, I don't think it's square to her and I won't do it. Women are nuisances in studios, anyway."

"What a charming way your brother has of explaining things," laughed Stephanie, passing her arm through Lily's: "Shall we reveal to him that he was seen with his Valerie at the St. Regis a week ago?"

"Why not?" he said, coolly, but inwardly exasperated. "She's as ornamental as anybody who dines there."

"I don't do that with my stenographers!" called out Cameron gleefully, cleaning up three odd in spades. "Oh, don't talk to me, Louis! You're a gay bunch all right!—you're qualified, every one of you, artists and models, to join the merry, merry!"

Stephanie dropped Lily's arm with a light laugh, swung her tennis bat, tossed a ball into the sunshine, and knocked it over toward the tennis court.

"I'll take you on if you like, Louis!" she called back over her shoulder, then continued her swift, graceful pace, white serge skirts swinging above her ankles, bright hair wind-blown—a lithe, full, wholesome figure, very comforting to look at.

"Come upstairs; I'll show you where Gordon's shoes are," said his sister.

Gordon's white shoes fitted him, also his white trousers. When he was dressed he came out of the room and joined his sister, who was seated on the stairs, balancing his racquet across her knees.

"Louis," she said, "how about the good taste of taking that model of yours to the St. Regis?"

"It was perfectly good taste," he said, carelessly.

"Stephanie took it like an angel," mused his sister.

"Why shouldn't she? If there was anything queer about it, you don't suppose I'd select the St. Regis, do you?"

"Nobody supposed there was anything queer."

"Well, then," he demanded, impatiently, "what's the row?"

"There is no row. Stephanie doesn't make what you call rows. Neither does anybody in your immediate family. I was merely questioning the wisdom of your public appearance—under the circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

His sister looked at him calmly:

"The circumstances of your understanding with Stephanie… . An understanding of years, which, in her mind at least, amounts to a tacit engagement."

"I'm glad you said that," he began, after a moment's steady thinking. "If that is the way that Stephanie and you still regard a college affair—"

"A—what!"

"A boy-and-girl preference which became an undergraduate romance—and has never amounted to anything more—"

"Louis!"

"What?"

"Don't you care for her?"

"Certainly; as much as I ever did—as much, as she really and actually cares for me," he answered, defiantly. "You know perfectly well what such affairs ever amount to—in the sentimental-ever-after line. Infant sweethearts almost never marry. She has no more idea of it than have I. We are fond of each other; neither of us has happened, so far, to encounter the real thing. But as soon as the right man comes along Stephanie will spread her wings and take flight—"

"You don't know her! Well—of all faithless wretches—your inconstancy makes me positively ill!"

"Inconstancy! I'm not inconstant. I never saw a girl I liked better than Stephanie. I'm not likely to. But that doesn't mean that I want to marry her—"

"For shame!"

"Nonsense! Why do you talk about inconstancy? It's a ridiculous word. What is constancy in love? Either an accident or a fortunate state of mind. To promise constancy in love is promising to continue in a state of mind over which your will has no control. It's never an honest promise; it can be only an honest hope. Love comes and goes and no man can stay it, and no man is its prophet. Coming unasked, sometimes undesired, often unwelcome, it goes unbidden, without reason, without logic, as inexorably as it came, governed by laws that no man has ever yet understood—"

"Louis!" exclaimed his sister, bewildered; "what in the world are you lecturing about? Why, to hear you expound the anatomy of love—"

He began to laugh, caught her hands, and kissed her:

"Little goose, that was all impromptu and horribly trite and commonplace. Only it was new to me because I never before took the trouble to consider it. But it's true, even if it is trite. People love or they don't love, and a regard for ethics controls only what they do about it."

"That's another Tupperesque truism, isn't it, dear?"

"Sure thing. Who am I to mock at the Proverbial One when I've never yet evolved anything better?… Listen; you don't want me to marry Stephanie, do you?"

"Yes, I do."

"No, you don't. You think you do—"

"I do, I do, Louis! She's the sweetest, finest, most generous, most suitable—"

"Sure," he said, hastily, "she's all that except 'suitable'—and she isn't that, and I'm not, either. For the love of Mike, Lily, let me go on admiring her, even loving her in a perfectly harmless—"

"It isn't harmless to caress a girl—"

"Why—you can't call it caressing—"

"What do you call it?"

"Nothing. We've always been on an intimate footing. She's perfectly unembarrassed about—whatever impulsive—er—fugitive impulses—"

"You do kiss her!"

"Seldom—very seldom. At moments the conditions happen accidentally to—suggest—some slight demonstration—of a very warm friendship—"

"You positively sicken me! Do you think a nice girl is going to let a man paw her if she doesn't consider him pledged to her?"

"I don't think anything about it. Nice girls have done madder things than their eulogists admit. As a plain matter of fact you can't tell what anybody nice is going to do under theoretical circumstances. And the nicer they are the bigger the gamble—particularly if they're endowed with brains—"

"That's cynicism. You seem to be developing several streaks—"

"Polite blinking of facts never changes them. Conforming to conventional and accepted theories never yet appealed to intelligence. I'm not going to be dishonest with myself; that's one of the streaks I've developed. You ask me if I love Stephanie enough to marry her, and I say I don't. What's the good of blinking it? I don't love anybody enough to marry 'em; but I like a number of girls well enough to spoon with them."

"That is disgusting!"

"No, it isn't," he said, with smiling weariness; "it's the unvarnished truth about the average man. Why wink at it? The average man can like a lot of girls enough to spoon and sentimentalise with them. It's the pure accident of circumstance and environment that chooses for him the one he marries. There are myriads of others in the world with whom, under proper circumstances and environment, he'd have been just as happy—often happier. Choice is a mystery, constancy a gamble, discontent the one best bet. It isn't pleasant; it isn't nice fiction and delightful romance; it isn't poetry or precept as it is popularly inculcated; it's the brutal truth about the average man… . And I'm going to find Stephanie. Have you any objection?"

"Louis—I'm terribly disappointed in you—"

"I'm disappointed, too. Until you spoke to me so plainly a few minutes ago I never clearly understood that I couldn't marry Stephanie. When I thought of it at all it seemed a vague and shadowy something, too far away to be really impending—threatening—like death—"

"Oh!" cried his sister in revolt. "I shall make it my business to see that Stephanie understands you thoroughly before this goes any farther—"

"I wish to heaven you would," he said, so heartily that his sister, exasperated, turned her back and marched away to the nursery.

When he went out to the tennis court he found Stephanie idly batting the balls across the net with Cameron, who, being dummy, had strolled down to gibe at her—a pastime both enjoyed:

"Here comes your Alonzo, fair lady—lightly skipping o'er the green—yes, yes—wearing the panties of his brother-in-law!" He fell into an admiring attitude and contemplated Neville with a simper, his ruddy, prematurely bald head cocked on one side:

"Oh, girls! Ain't he just grand!" he exclaimed. "Honest, Stephanie, your young man has me in the ditch with two blow-outs and the gas afire!"

"Get out of this court," said Neville, hurling a ball at him.

"Isn't he the jealous old thing!" cried Cameron, flouncing away with an affectation of feminine indignation. And presently the tennis balls began to fly, and the little jets of white dust floated away on the June breeze.

They were very evenly matched; they always had been, never asking odds or offering handicaps in anything. It had always been so; at the traps she could break as many clay birds as he could; she rode as well, drove as well; their averages usually balanced. From the beginning—even as children—it had been always give and take and no favour.

And so it was now; sets were even; it was a matter of service.

Luncheon interrupted a drawn game; Stephanie, flushed, smiling, came around to his side of the net to join him on the way to the house:

"How do you keep up your game, Louis? Or do I never improve? It's curious, isn't it, that we are always deadlocked."

Bare-armed, bright hair in charming disorder, she swung along beside him with that quick, buoyant step so characteristic of a spirit ever undaunted, saluting the others on the terrace with high-lifted racquet.

"Nobody won," she said. "Come on, Alice, if you're going to scrub before luncheon. Thank you, Louis; I've had a splendid game—" She stretched out a frank hand to him, going, and the tips of her fingers just brushed his.

His sister gave him a tragic look, which he ignored, and a little later luncheon was on and Cameron garrulous, and Querida his own gentle, expressive, fascinating self, devotedly receptive to any woman who was inclined to talk to him or to listen.

That evening Neville said to his sister: "There's a train at midnight; I don't think I'll stay over—"

"Why?"

"I want to be in town early."

"Why?"

"The early light is the best."

"I thought you'd stopped painting for a while."

"I have, practically. There's one thing I keep on with, in a desultory sort of way—"

"What is it?"

"Oh, nothing of importance—" he hesitated—"that Is, it may be important. I can't be sure, yet."

"Will you tell me what it is?"

"Why, yes. It's a portrait—a study—"

"Of whom, dear?"

"Oh, of nobody you know—"

"Is it a portrait of Valerie West?"

"Yes," he said, carelessly.

There was a silence; in the starlight his shadowy face was not clearly visible to his sister.

"Are you leaving just to continue that portrait?"

"Yes. I'm interested in it."

"Don't go," she said, in a low voice.

"Don't be silly," he returned shortly.

"Dear, I am not silly, but I suspect you are beginning to be. And over a model!"

"Lily, you little idiot," he laughed, exasperated; "what in the world is worrying you?"

"Your taking that girl to the St. Regis. It isn't like you."

"Good Lord! How many girls do you suppose I've taken to various places?"

"Not many," she said, smiling at him. "Your reputation for gallantries is not alarming."

Ho reddened. "You're perfectly right. That sort of thing never appealed to me."

"Then why does it appeal to you now?"

"It doesn't. Can't you understand that this girl is entirely different—"

"Yes, I understand. And that is what worries me."

"It needn't. It's precisely like taking any girl you know and like—"

"Then let me know her—if you mean to decorate-public places with her."

They looked at one another steadily.

"Louis," she said, "this pretty Valerie is not your sister's sort, or you wouldn't hesitate."

"I—hesitate—yes, certainly I do. It's absurd on the face of it. She's too fine a nature to be patronised—too inexperienced in the things of your world—too ignorant of petty conventions and formalities—too free and fearless and confident and independent to appeal to the world you live in."

"Isn't that a rather scornful indictment against my world, dear?"

"No. Your world is all right in its way. You and I were brought up in it. I got out of it. There are other worlds. The one I now inhabit is more interesting to me. It's purely a matter of personal taste, dear. Valerie West inhabits a world that suits her."

"Has she had any choice in the matter?"

"I—yes. She's had the sense and the courage to keep out of the various unsafe planets where electric light furnishes the principal illumination."

"But has she had a chance for choosing a better planet than the one you say she prefers? Your choice was free. Was hers?"

"Look here, Lily! Why on earth are you so significant about a girl you never saw—scarcely ever heard of—"

"Dear, I have not told you everything. I have heard of her—of her charm, her beauty, her apparent innocence—yes, her audacity, her popularity with men… . Such things are not unobserved and unreported between your new planet and mine. Harry Annan is frankly crazy about her, and his sister Alice is scared to death. Mr. Ogilvy, Mr. Burleson, Clive Gail, dozens of men I know are quite mad about her… . If it was she whom you used as model for the figures in the Byzantine decorations, she is divine—the loveliest creature to look at! And I don't care, Louis; I don't care a straw one way or the other except that I know you have never bothered with the more or less Innocently irregular gaieties which attract many men of your age and temperament. And so—when I hear that you are frequently seen—"

"Frequently?"

"Is that St. Regis affair the only one?"

"No, of course not. But, as for my being with her frequently—"

"Well?"

He was silent for a moment, then, looking up with a laugh:

"I like her immensely. Until this moment I didn't realise how much I do like her—how pleasant it is to be with a girl who is absolutely fearless, clever, witty, intelligent, and unspoiled."

"Are there no girls in your own set who conform to this standard?"

"Plenty. But their very environment and conventional traditions kill them—make them a nuisance."

"Louis!"

"That's more plain truth, which no woman likes. Will you tell me what girl in your world, who approaches the qualitative standard set by Valerie West, would go about by day or evening with any man except her brother? Valerie does. What girl would be fearless enough to ignore the cast-iron fetters of her caste? Valerie West is a law unto herself—a law as sweet and good and excellent and as inflexible as any law made by men to restrain women's liberty, arouse them to unhappy self-consciousness and infect them with suspicion. Every one of you are the terrified slaves of custom, and you know it. Most men like it. I don't. I'm no tea drinker, no cruncher of macaroons, no gabbler at receptions, no top-hatted haunter of weddings, no social graduate of the Ecole Turvydrop. And these places—if I want to find companionship in any girl of your world—must frequent. And I won't. And so there you are."

His sister came up to him and placed her arms around his neck.

"Such—a—wrong-headed—illogical—boy," she sighed, kissing him leisurely to punctuate her words. '"If you marry a girl you love you can have all the roaming and unrestrained companionship you want. Did that ever occur to you?"

"At that price," he said, laughing, "I'll do without it."

"Wrong head, handsome head! I'm in despair about you. Why in the world cannot artists conform to the recognised customs of a perfectly pleasant and respectable world? Don't answer me! You'll make me very unhappy… . Now go and talk to Stephanie. The child won't understand your going to-night, but make the best of it to her."

"Good Lord, Lily! I haven't a string tied to me. It doesn't matter to Stephanie what I do—why I go or remain. You're all wrong. Stephanie and I understand each other."

"I'll see that she understands you" said his sister, sorrowfully.

He laughed and kissed her again, impatient. But why he was impatient he himself did not know. Certainly it was not to find Stephanie, for whom he started to look—and, on the way, glanced at his watch, determined not to miss the train that would bring him into town in time to talk to Valerie West over the telephone.

Passing the lighted and open windows, he saw Querida and Alice absorbed in a tête-à-tête, ensconced in a corner of the big living room; saw Gordon playing with Heinz, the dog—named Heinz because of the celebrated "57 varieties" of dog in his pedigree—saw Miss Aulne at solitaire, exchanging lively civilities with Sandy Cameron at the piano between charming bits of a classic ballad which he was inclined to sing:

"I'd share my pottage With you, dear, but True love in a cottage Is hell in a hut."

"Is that you, Stephanie?" he asked, as a dark figure, seated on the veranda, turned a shadowy head toward him.

"Yes. Isn't this starlight magnificent? I've been up to the nursery looking at the infant wonder—just wild to hug him; but he's asleep, and his nurse glared at me. So I thought I'd come and look at something else as unattainable—the stars, Louis," she added, laughing—"not you."

"Sure," he said, smiling, "I'm always obtainable. Unlike the infant upon whom you had designs," he added, "I'm neither asleep nor will any nurse glare at you if you care to steal a kiss from me."

"I've no inclination to transfer my instinctively maternal transports to you," she said, serenely, "though, maternal solicitude might not be amiss concerning you."

"Do you think I need moral supervision?"

"Not by me."

"By whom?"

"Ask me an easier one, Louis. And—I didn't say you needed it at all, did I?"

He sat beside her, silent, head lifted, examining the stars.

"I'm going back on the midnight," he remarked, casually.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed, with her winning frankness.

"I'm—there's something I have to attend to in town—"

"Work?"

"It has to do with my work—indirectly—"

She glanced sideways at him, and remained for a moment curiously observant.

"How is the work going, anyway?" she asked.

He hesitated. "I've apparently come up slap against a blank wall. It isn't easy to explain how I feel—but I've no confidence in myself—"

"You! No confidence? How absurd!"

"It's true," he said a little sullenly.

"You are having a spasm of progressive development," she said, calmly. "You take it as a child takes teething—with a squirm and a mental howl instead of a physical yell."

He laughed. "I suppose it's something of that sort. But there's more—a self-distrust amounting to self-disgust at moments… . Stephanie, I want to do something good—"

"You have—dozens of times."

"People say so. The world forgets what is really good—" he made a nervous gesture—"always before us poor twentieth-century men looms the goal guarded by the vast, austere, menacing phantoms of the Masters."

"Nobody ever won a race looking behind him," she Said, gaily; "let 'em menace and loom!"

He laughed in a half-hearted fashion, then his head fell again slowly, and he sat there brooding, silent.

"Louis, why are you always dissatisfied?"

"I always will be, I suppose." His discontented gaze grew more vague.

"Can you never learn to enjoy the moment?"

"It goes too quickly, and there are so many others which promise more, and will never fulfil their promise; I know it. We painters know it when we dare to think clearly. It is better not to think too clearly—better to go on and pretend to expect attainment… . Stephanie, sometimes I wish I were in an honest business—selling, buying—and could close up shop and go home to pleasant dreams."

"Can't you?"

"No. It's eternal obsession. A painter's work is never ended. It goes on with some after they are asleep; and then they go crazy," he added, and laughed and laid his hand lightly and unthinkingly over hers where it rested on the arm of her chair. And he remained unaware of her delicate response to the contact.

The stars were clear and liquid-bright, swarming in myriads in the June sky. A big meteor fell, leaving an incandescent arc which faded instantly.

"I wonder what time it is," Be said.

"You mustn't miss your train, must you?"

"No." … Suddenly it struck him that it would be one o'clock before he could get to the studio and call up Valerie. That would be too late. He couldn't awake her just for the pleasure of talking to her. Besides, he was sure to see her in the morning when she came to him for her portrait… . Yet—yet—he wanted to talk to her… . There seemed to be no particular reason for this desire.

"I think I'll just step to the telephone a moment." He rose, and her fingers dropped from his hand. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all," she smiled. "The stars are very faithful friends. I'll be well guarded until you come back, Louis."

What she said, for some reason, made him slightly uncomfortable. He was thinking of her words as he called up "long distance" and waited. Presently Central called him with a brisk "Here's your party!" And very far away he heard her voice:

"I know it is you. Is it?"

"Who?"

"It is! I recognise your voice. But which is it—Kelly or Louis or Mr. Neville?"

"All three," he replied, laughing.

"But which gentleman is in the ascendant? The god-like one? Or the conventional Mr. Neville? Or—the bad and very lovable and very human Louis?"

"Stop talking-nonsense, Valerie. What are you doing?"

"Conversing with an abrupt gentleman called Louis Neville. I was reading."

"All alone in your room?"

"Naturally. Two people couldn't get into it unless one of them also got into bed."

"You poor child! What are you reading?"

"Will you promise not to laugh?"

"Yes, I will."

"Then—I was reading the nineteenth psalm."

"It's a beauty, isn't it," he said.

"Oh, Louis, it is glorious!—I don't know what in it appeals most thrillingly to me—the wisdom or the beauty of the verse—but I love it."

"It is fine," he said. "… And are you there in your room all alone this beautiful starry night, reading the psalms of old King David?"

"Yes. What are you doing? Where are you?"

"At Ashuelyn, my sister's home."

"Oh! Well, it is perfectly sweet of you to think of me and to call me up—"

"I usually—I—well, naturally I think of you. I thought I'd just call you up to say good night. You see my train doesn't get in until one this morning; and of course I couldn't wake you—"

"Yes, you could. I am perfectly willing to have you wake me."

"But that would be the limit!"

"Is that your limit, Louis? If it is you will never disturb my peace of mind." He heard her laughing at the other end of the wire, delighted with her own audacity.

He said: "Shall I call you up at one o'clock when I get into town?"

"Try it. I may awake."

"Very well then. I'll make them ring till daylight."

"Oh, they won't have to do that! I always know, about five minutes before you call me, that you are going to."

"You uncanny little thing! You've said that before."

"It's true. I knew before you called me that you would. It's a vague feeling—a—I don't know… . And oh, Louis, it is hot in this room! Are you cool out there in the country?"

"Yes; and I hate to be when I think of you—"

"I'm glad you are. It's one comfort, anyway. John Burleson called me up and asked me to go to Manhattan Beach, but somehow it didn't appeal to me… . I've rather missed you."

"Have you?"

"Really."

"Well, I'll admit I've missed you."

"Really?"

Sure thing! I wish to heaven I were in town now. We would go somewhere."

"Oh, I wish so, too."

"Isn't it the limit!"

"It is, Kelly. Can't you be a real god for a moment and come floating into my room in a golden cloud?"

"Shall I try?"

"Please do."

"All right. I'll do my god-like best. And anyway I'll call you up at one. Good night."

"Good night."

He went back to the girl waiting for him in the starlight.

"Well," she said, smiling at his altered expression, "you certainly have recovered your spirits."

He laughed and took her unreluctant fingers and kissed them—a boyishly impulsive expression of the gay spirits which might have perplexed him or worried him to account for if he had tried to analyse them. But he didn't; he was merely conscious of a sudden inrush of high spirits—of a warm feeling for all the world—this star-set world, so still and sweet-scented.

"Stephanie, dear," he said, smiling, "you know perfectly well that I think—always have thought—that there was nobody like you. You know that, don't you?"

She laughed, but her pulses quickened a little.

"Well, then," he went on. "I take it for granted that our understanding is as delightfully thorough as it has always been—a warm, cordial intimacy which leaves us perfectly unembarrassed—perfectly free to express our affection for each other without fear of being misunderstood."

The girl lifted her blue eyes: "Of course."

"That's what I told Lily," he nodded, delighted. I told her that you and I understood each other—that it was silly of her to suspect anything sentimental in our comradeship; that whenever the real thing put in an appearance and came tagging down the pike after you, you'd sink the gaff into him—"

"The—what?"

"Rope him and paste your monogram all over him."

"I certainly will," she said, laughing. Eyes and lips and voice were steady; but the tumult in her brain confused her.

"That is exactly what I told Lily," he said. "She seems to think that if two people frankly enjoy each other's society they want to marry each other. All married women are that way. Like clever decoys they take genuine pleasure in bringing the passing string under the guns."

He laughed and kissed her pretty fingers again:

"Don't you listen to my sister. Freedom's a good thing; and people are selfish when happy; they don't set up a racket to attract others into their private paradise."

"Oh, Louis, that is really horrid of you. Don't you think Lily is happy?"

"Sure—in a way. You can't have a perfectly good husband and baby, and have the fun of being courted by other aspirants, too. Of course married women are happy; but they give up a lot. And sometimes it slightly irritates them to remember it when they see the unmarried innocently frisking as they once frisked. And it's their instinct to call out 'Come in! Matrimony's fine! You don't know what you are missing!'"

Stephanie laughed and lay back in her steamer chair, her hand abandoned to him. And when her mirth had passed a slight sense of fatigue left her silent, inert, staring at nothing.

When the time came to say adieu he kissed her as he sometimes did, with a smiling and impersonal tenderness—not conscious of the source of all this happy, demonstrative, half impatient animation which seemed to possess him in every fibre.

"Good-bye, you dear girl," he said, as the lights of the motor lit up the drive. "I've had a bully time, and I'll see you soon again."

"Come when you can, Louis. There is no man I would rather see."

"And no girl I would rather go to," he said, warmly, scarcely thinking what he was saying.

Their clasped hands relaxed, fell apart. He went in to take leave of Lily and Gordon and their guests, then emerged hastily and sprang into the car.

Overhead the June stars watched him as he sped through the fragrant darkness. But with him, time lagged; even the train crawled as he timed it to the ticking seconds of his opened watch.

In the city a taxi swallowed him and his haste; and it seemed as though he would never get to his studio and to the telephone; but at last he heard her voice—a demure, laughing little voice:

"I didn't think you'd be brute enough to do it!"

"But you said I might call you—"

"There are many things that a girl says from which she expects a man to infer, tactfully and mercifully, the contrary."

"Did I wake you, Valerie? I'm terribly sorry—"

"If you are sorry I'll retire to my pillow—"

"I'll ring you up again!"

"Oh, if you employ threats I think I'd better listen to you. What have you to say to me?"

"What were you doing when I rang you up?"

"I Wish I could say that I was asleep. But I can't. And if I tell the truth I've got to flatter you. So I refuse to answer."

"You were not waiting up for—"

"Kelly! I refuse to answer! Anyway you didn't keep your word to me."

"How do you mean?"

"You promised to appear in a golden cloud!"

"Something went wrong with the Olympian machinery," he explained, "and I was obliged to take the train… . What are you doing there, anyway?"

"Now?"

"Yes, now."

"Why, I'm sitting at the telephone in my night-dress talking to an exceedingly inquisitive gentleman—"

"I mean were you reading more psalms?"

"No. If you must know, I was reading 'Bocaccio'"

He could hear her laughing.

"I was meaning to ask you how you'd spent the day," he began. "Haven't you been out at all?"

"Oh, yes. I'm not under vows, Kelly."

"Where?"

"Now I wonder whether I'm expected to account for every minute when I'm not with you? I'm beginning to believe that it's a sort of monstrous vanity that incites you to such questions. And I'm going to inform you that I did not spend the day sitting by the window and thinking about you."

"What did you do?"

"I motored in the Park. I lunched at Woodmanston with a perfectly good young man. I enjoyed it."

"Who was the man?"

"Sam."

"Oh," said Neville, laughing.

"You make me perfectly furious by laughing," she exclaimed. "I wish I could tell you that I'd been to Niagara Falls with José Querida!"

"I wouldn't believe it, anyway."

"I wouldn't believe it myself, even if I had done it," she said, naïvely. There was a pause; then:

"I'm going to retire. Good night."

"Good night, Valerie."

"Louis!"

"What?"

"You say the golden-cloud machinery isn't working?"

"It seems to have slipped a cog."

"Oh! I thought you might have mended it and that—perhaps—I had better not leave my window open."

"That cloud is warranted to float through solid masonry."

"You alarm me, Kelly."

"I'm sorry, but the gods never announce their visits."

"I know it… . And I suppose I must sleep in a dinner gown. When one receives a god it's a full-dress affair, isn't it?"

He laughed, not mistaking her innocent audacity.

"Unexpected Olympians must take their chances," he said. "… Are you sleepy?"

"Fearfully."

"Then I won't keep you—"

"But I hope you won't be rude enough to dismiss me before I have a chance to give you your congé!"

"You blessed child. I could stay here all night listening to you—"

"Could you? That's a temptation."

"To you, Valerie?"

"Yes—a temptation to make a splendid exit. Every girl adores being regretted. So I'll hang up the receiver, I think… . Good night, Kelly, dear… . Good night, Louis. À demain!—non—pardon! à bien tôt!—parceque il est deux heures de matin! Et—vous m'avez rendu bien heureuse."

Chapter 5

 

Toward the last of June Neville left town to spend a month with his father and mother at their summer Lome near Portsmouth. Valerie had already gone to the mountains with Rita Tevis, gaily refusing her address to everybody. And, packing their steamer trunks and satchels, the two young girls departed triumphantly for the unindicated but modest boarding-house tucked away somewhere amid the hills of Delaware County, determined to enjoy every minute of a vacation well earned, and a surcease from the round of urban and suburban gaiety which the advent of July made a labour instead of a relaxation.

From some caprice or other Valerie had decided that her whereabouts should remain unknown even to Neville. And for a week it suited her perfectly. She swam in the stump-pond with Rita, drove a buckboard with Rita, fished industriously with Rita, played tennis on a rutty court, danced rural dances at a "platform," went to church and giggled like a schoolgirl, and rocked madly on the veranda in a rickety rocking-chair, demurely tolerant of the adoration of two boys working their way through, college, a smartly dressed and very confident drummer doing his two weeks, and several assorted and ardent young men who, at odd moments, had persuaded her to straw rides and soda at the village druggists.

And all the while she giggled with Rita in a most shameless and undignified fashion, went about hatless, with hair blowing and sleeves rolled up; decorated a donation party at the local minister's and flirted with him till his gold-rimmed eye-glasses protruded; behaved like a thoughtful and considerate angel to the old, uninteresting and infirm; romped like a young goddess with the adoring children of the boarders, and was fiercely detested by the crocheting spinsters rocking in acidulated rows on the piazza.

The table was meagre and awful and pruneful; but she ate with an appetite that amazed Rita, whose sophisticated palate was grossly insulted thrice daily.

"How on earth you can contrive to eat that hash," she said, resentfully, "I don't understand. When my Maillard's give out I'll quietly starve in a daisy field somewhere."

"Close your eyes and pretend you and Sam are dining at the Knickerbocker," suggested Valerie, cheerfully. "That's what I do when the food doesn't appeal to me."

"With whom do you pretend you are dining?"

"Sometimes with Louis Neville, sometimes with Querida," she, said, frankly. "It helps the hash wonderfully. Try it, dear. Close your eyes and visualise some agreeable man, and the food isn't so very awful."

Rita laughed: "I'm not as fond of men as that."

"Aren't you? I am. I do like an agreeable man, and I don't mind saying so."

"I've observed that," said Rita, still laughing.

"Of course you have. I've spent too many years without them not to enjoy them now—bless their funny hearts!"

"I'm glad there are no men here," observed Rita.

"But there are men here," said Valerie, innocently.

"Substitutes. Lemons."

"The minister is superficially educated—"

"He's a muff."

"A nice muff. I let him pat my gloved hand."

"You wicked child. He's married."

"He only patted it in spiritual emphasis, dear. Married or single he's more agreeable to me than that multi-coloured drummer. I let the creature drive me to the post office in a buckboard, and he continued to sit closer until I took the reins, snapped the whip, and drove at a gallop over that terrible stony road. And he is so fat that it nearly killed him. It killed all sentiment in him, anyway."

Rita, stretched lazily in a hammock and displaying a perfectly shod foot and silken ankle to the rage of the crocheters on the veranda, said dreamily:

"The unfortunate thing about us is that we know too much to like the only sort of men who are likely to want to marry us."

"What of it?" laughed Valerie. "We don't want to marry them—or anybody. Do we?"

"Don't you?"

"Don't I what?"

"Want to get married?"

"I should think not."

"Never?"

"Not if I feel about it as I do now. I've never had enough play, Rita. I've missed all those years that you've had—that most girls have had. I never had any boys to play with. That's really all I am doing now—playing with grown-up boys. That's all I am—merely a grown-up girl with a child's heart."

"A heart of gold," murmured Rita, "you darling."

"Oh, it isn't all gold by any means! It's full of silver whims and brassy selfishness and tin meannesses and senseless ideas—full of fiery, coppery mischief, too; and, sometimes, I think, a little malice—perhaps a kind of diluted deviltry. But it's a hungry heart, dear, hungry for laughter and companionship and friendship—with a capacity for happiness! Ah, you don't know, dear—you never can know how capable I am of friendship and happiness!"

"And—sentiment?"

"I—don't—know."

"Better watch out, sweetness!"

"I do."

Rita said thoughtfully, swinging in her hammock:

"Sentiment, for us, is no good. I've learned that."

"You?"

"Of course."

"How?"

"Experience," said Rita, carelessly. "Every girl is bound to have it. She doesn't have to hunt for it, either."

"Were you ever in—love?" asked Valerie, curiously.

"Now, dear, if I ever had been happily in love is it likely you wouldn't know it?"

"I suppose so," said Valerie… . She added, musingly:

"I wonder what will become of me if I ever fall in love."

"If you'll take my advice you'll run."

"Run? Where? For goodness' sake!"

"Anywhere until you became convalescent."

"That would be a ridiculous idea," remarked Valerie so seriously that Rita began to laugh:

"You sweet thing," she said, "it's a million chances that you'd be contented only with the sort of man who wouldn't marry you."

"Because I'm poor, you mean? Or because I am working for my living?"

"Both—and then some."

"What else?"

"Why, the only sort of men who'd attract you have come out of their own world of their own accord to play about for a while in our world. They can go back; that is the law. But they can't take us with them."

"They'd be ashamed, you mean?"

"Perhaps not. A man is likely enough to try. But alas! for us, if we're silly enough to go. I tell you, Valerie, that their world is full of mothers and sisters and feminine relatives and friends who could no more endure us than they would permit us to endure them. It takes courage for a man to ask us to go into that world with him; it takes more for us to do it. And our courage is vain. We stand no chance. It means a rupture of all his relations; and a drifting—not into our world, not into his, but into a horrible midway void, peopled by derelicts… . I know, dear, believe me. And I say that to fall in love is no good, no use, for us. We've been spoiled for what we might once have found satisfactory. We are people without a class, you and I."

Valerie laughed: "That gives us the more liberty, doesn't it?"

"It's up to us, dear. We are our own law, social and spiritual. If we live inside it we are not going to be any too happy. If we live without it—I don't know. Sometimes I wonder whether some of the pretty girls you and I see at Rector's—"

"I've wondered, too… . They look happy—some of them."

"I suppose they are—for a while… . But the worst of it is that it never lasts."

"I suppose not." Valerie pondered, grave, velvet-eyed, idly twisting a grass stem.

"After all," she said, "perhaps a brief happiness—with love—is worth the consequences."

"Many women risk it… . I wonder how many men, if social conditions were reversed, would risk it? Not many, Valerie."

They remained silent; Rita lay in the shadow of the maples, eyes closed; Valerie plaited her grass stems with absent-minded industry.

"I never yet wished to marry a man," she observed, presently.

Rita made no response.

"Because," continued the girl with quaint precision, "I never yet wanted anything that was not offered freely; even friendship. I think—I don't know—but I think—if any man offered me love—and I found that I could respond—I think that, if I took it, I'd be contented with love—and ask nothing further—wish nothing else—unless he wanted it, too."

Rita opened her eyes.

Valerie, plaiting her grass very deftly, smiled to herself.

"I don't know much about love, Rita; but I believe it is supreme contentment. And if it is—what is the use of asking for more than contents one?"

"It's safer."

"Oh—I know that… . I've read enough newspapers and novels and real literature to know that. Incidentally the Scriptures treat of it… . But, after all, love is love. You can't make it more than it is by law and custom; you can't make it less; you can't summon it; you can't dismiss it… . And I believe that I'd be inclined to take it, however offered, if it were really love."

"That is unmoral, dear," said Rita, smiling.

"I'm not unmoral, am I?"

"Well—your philosophy sounds Pagan."

"Does it? Then, as you say, perhaps I'd better run if anything resembling love threatens me."

"The nymphs ran—in Pagan times."

"And the gods ran after them," returned Valerie, laughing. "I've a very fine specimen of god as a friend, by the way—a Protean gentleman with three quick-change stunts. He's a perfectly good god, too, but he never ran after me or tried to kiss me."

"You don't mean Querida, then."

"No. He's no god."

"Demi-god."

"Not even that," said Valerie; "he's a sentimental shepherd who likes to lie with his handsome head in a girl's lap and make lazy eyes at her."

"I know," nodded Rita. "Look out for that shepherd."

"Does he bite?"

"No; there's the trouble. Anybody can pet him."

Valerie laughed, turned over, and lay at length on her stomach in the grass, exploring the verdure for a four-leaf clover.

"I never yet found one," she said, cheerfully. "But then I've never before seen much grass except in the Park."

"Didn't you ever go to the country?"

"No. Mother was a widow and bedridden. We had a tiny income; I have it now. But it wasn't enough to take us to the country."

"Didn't you work?"

"I couldn't leave mother. Besides, she wished to educate me."

"Didn't you go to school?"

"Only a few months. We had father's books. We managed to buy a few more—or borrow them from the library. And that is how I was educated, Rita—in a room with a bedridden mother."

"She must have been well educated."

"I should think so. She was a college graduate… . When I was fifteen I took the examinations for Barnard—knowing, of course, that I couldn't go—and passed in everything… . If mother could have spared me I could have had a scholarship."

"That was hard luck, wasn't it, dear?"

"N-no. I had mother—as long as she lived. After she died I had what she had given me—and she had the education of a cultivated woman; she was a lover of the best in literature and in art, a woman gently bred, familiar with sorrow and privation."

"If you choose," said Rita, "you are equipped for a governess—or a lady's companion—or a secretary—"

"I suppose I am. Before I signed with Schindler I advertised, offering myself as a teacher. How many replies do you suppose I received?"

"How many?"

"Not one."

Rita sighed. "I suppose you couldn't afford to go on advertising."

"No, and I couldn't afford to wait… . Mother's burial took all the little income. I was glad enough when Schindler signed me… . But a girl can't remain long with Schindler."

"I know."

Valerie plucked a grass blade and bit it in two reflectively.

"It's a funny sort of a world, isn't it, Rita?"

"Very humorous—if you look at it that way."

"Don't you?"

"Not entirely."

Valerie glanced up at the hammock.

"How did you happen to become a model, Rita?"

"I'm a clergyman's daughter; what do you expect?" she said, with smiling bitterness.

"You!"

"From Massachusetts, dear… . The blue-light elders got on my nerves. I wanted to study music, too, with a view to opera." She laughed unpleasantly.

"Was your home life unhappy, dear?"

"Does a girl leave happiness?"

"You didn't run away, did you?"

"I did—straight to the metropolis as a moth to its candle."

Valerie waited, then, timidly: "Did you care to tell me any more, dear? I thought perhaps you might like me to ask you. It isn't curiosity."

"I know it isn't—you blessed child! I'll tell you—some day—perhaps… . Pull the rope and set me swinging, please… . Isn't this sky delicious—glimpsed through the green leaves? Fancy you're not knowing the happiness of the country! I've always known it. Perhaps the trouble was I had too much of it. My town was an ancient, respectable, revolutionary relic set in a very beautiful rolling country near the sea; but I suppose I caught the infection—the country rolled, the breakers rolled, and finally I rolled out of it all—over and over plump into Gotham! And I didn't land on my feet, either… . You are correct, Valerie; there is something humorous about this world… . There's one of the jokes, now!" as a native passed, hunched up on the dashboard, driving a horse and a heifer in double harness.

"Shall we go to the post office with him?" cried Valerie, jumping to her feet.

"Now, dear, what is the use of our going to the post office when nobody knows our address and we never could possibly expect a letter!"

"That is true," said Valerie, pensively. "Rita, I'm beginning to think I'd like to have a letter. I believe—believe that I'll write to—to somebody."

"That is more than I'll do," yawned Rita, closing her eyes. She opened them presently and said:

"I've a nice little writing case in my trunk. Sam presented it. Bring it out here if you're going to write."

The next time she unclosed her eyes Valerie sat cross-legged on the grass by the hammock, the writing case on her lap, scribbling away as though she really enjoyed it.

The letter was to Neville. It ran on:

"Rita is asleep in a hammock; she's too pretty for words. I love her. Why? Because she loves me, silly!

"I'm a very responsive individual, Kelly, and a pat on the head elicits purrs.

"I want you to write to me. Also, pray be flattered; you are the only person on earth who now has my address. I may send it to José Querida; but that is none of your business. When I saw the new moon on the stump-pond last night I certainly did wish for Querida and a canoe. He can sing very charmingly.

"Now I suppose you want to know under what circumstances I have permitted myself to wish for you. If you talk to a man about another man he always attempts to divert the conversation to himself. Yes, he does. And you are no better than other men, Louis—not exempt from their vanities and cunning little weaknesses. Are you?

"Well, then, as you admit that you are thoroughly masculine, I'll admit that deep in a corner of my heart I've wished for you a hundred times. The moon suggests Querida; but about everything suggests you. Now are you flattered?

"Anyway, I do want you. I like you, Louis! I like you, Mr. Neville! And oh, Kelly, I worship you, without sentiment or any nonsense in reserve. You are life, you are happiness, you are gaiety, you are inspiration, you are contentment.

"I wonder if it would be possible for you to come up here for a day or two after your visit to your parents is ended. I'd adore it. You'd probably hate it. Such food! Such beds! Such people! But—could you—would you come—just to walk in the heavenly green with me? I wonder.

"And, Louis, I'd row you about on the majestic expanse of the stump-pond, and we'd listen to the frogs. Can you desire anything more romantic?

"The trouble with you is that you're romantic only on canvas. Anyway, I can't stir you to sentiment. Can I? True, I never tried. But if you come here, and conditions are favourable, and you are so inclined, and I am feeling lonely, nobody can tell what might happen in a flat scow on the stump-pond.

"To be serious for a moment, Louis, I'd really love to have you come. You know I never before saw the real country; I'm a novice in the woods and fields, and, somehow, I'd like to have you share my novitiate in this—as you did when I first came to you. It is a curious feeling I have about anything new; I wish you to experience it with me.

"Rita is awake and exploring the box of Maillard's which is about empty. Be a Samaritan and send me some assorted chocolates. Be a god, and send me something to read—anything, please, from Jacobs to James. There's latitude for you. Be a man, and send me yourself. You have no idea how welcome you'd be. The chances are that I'd seize you and embrace you. But if you're willing to run that risk, take your courage in both hands and come.

"Your friend,

"VALERIE WEST."

The second week of her sojourn she caught a small pickerel—the only fish she had ever caught in all her life. And she tearfully begged the yokel who was rowing her to replace the fish in its native element. But it was too late; and she and Rita ate her victim, sadly, for dinner.

At the end of the week an enormous box of bonbons came for her. Neither she nor Rita were very well next day, but a letter from Neville did wonders to restore abused digestion.

Other letters, at intervals, cheered her immensely, as did baskets of fruit and boxes of chocolates and a huge case of books of all kinds.

"Never," she said to Rita, "did I ever hear of such an angel as Louis Neville. When he comes the first of August I wish you to keep tight hold of me, because, if he flees my demonstrations, I feel quite equal to running him down."

But, curiously enough, it was a rather silent and subdued young girl in white who offered Neville a shy and sun-tanned hand as he descended from the train and came forward, straw hat under one arm, to greet her.

"How well you look!" he exclaimed, laughingly; "I never saw such a flawless specimen of healthy perfection!"

"Oh, I know I look like a milk-maid, Kelly; I've behaved like one, too. Did you ever see such a skin? Do you suppose this sun-burn will ever come off?"

"Instead of snow and roses you're strawberries and cream," he said—"and it's just as fetching, Valerie. How are you, anyway?"

"Barely able to sit up and take nourishment," she admitted, demurely. "… I don't think you look particularly vigorous," she added, more seriously. "You are brown but thin."

"Thin as a scorched pancake," he nodded. "The ocean was like a vast plate of clam soup in which I simmered several times a day until I've become as leathery and attenuated as a punctured pod of kelp… . Where's the rig we depart in, Valerie?" he concluded, looking around the sun-scorched, wooden platform with smiling interest.

"I drove down to meet you in a buck-board."

"Splendid! Is there room for my suit case?"

"Plenty. I brought yards of rope."

They walked to the rear of the station where buckboard and horse stood tethered to a tree. He fastened his suit case to the rear of the vehicle, swathing it securely in, fathoms of rope; she sprang in, he followed; but she begged him to let her drive, and pulled on a pair of weather-faded gloves with a business-like air which was enchanting.

So he yielded seat and rusty reins to her; whip in hand, she steered the fat horse through the wilderness of arriving and departing carriages of every rural style and description—stages, surreys, mountain-waggons, buck-boards—drove across the railroad track, and turned up a mountain road—a gradual ascent bordered heavily by blackberry, raspberry, thimble berry and wild grape, and flanked by young growths of beech and maple set here and there with hemlock and white pine. But the characteristic foliage was laurel and rhododendron—endless stretches of the glossy undergrowth fringing every woodland, every diamond-clear water-course.

"It must be charming when it's in blossom," he said, drawing the sweet air of the uplands deep into his lungs. "These streams look exceedingly like trout, too. How high are we?"

"Two thousand feet in the pass, Kelly. The hills are much higher. You need blankets at night… ." She turned her head and smilingly considered him:

"I can't yet believe you are here."

"I've been trying to realise it, too."

"Did you come in your favourite cloud?"

"No; on an exceedingly dirty train."

"You've a cinder mark on your nose."

"Thanks." He gave her his handkerchief and she wiped away the smear.

"How long can you stay?—Oh, don't answer! Please forget I asked you. When you've got to go just tell me a few minutes before your departure… . The main thing in life is to shorten unhappiness as much as possible. That is Rita's philosophy."

"Is Rita well?"

"Perfectly—thanks to your bonbons. She doesn't precisely banquet on the fare here—poor dear! But then," she added, philosophically, "what can a girl expect on eight dollars a week? Besides, Rita has been spoiled. I am not unaccustomed to fasting when what is offered does not interest me."

"You mean that boarding house of yours in town?"

"Yes. Also, when mother and I kept house with an oil stove and two rooms the odour of medicine and my own cooking left me rather indifferent to the pleasures of Lucullus."

"You poor child!"

"Not at all to be pitied—as long as I had mother," she said, with a quiet gravity that silenced him.

Up, up, and still up they climbed, the fat horse walking leisurely, nipping at blackberry leaves here, snatching at tender maple twigs there. The winged mountain beauties—Diana's butterflies—bearing on their velvety, blue-black pinions the silver bow of the goddess, flitted ahead of the horse—celestial pilots to the tree-clad heights beyond.

Save for the noise of the horse's feet and the crunch of narrow, iron-tired wheels, the stillness was absolute under the azure splendour of the heavens.

"I am not yet quite at my ease—quite accustomed to it," she said.

"To what, Valerie?"

"To the stillness; to the remote horizons… . At night the vastness of things, the height of the stars, fascinate me to the edge of uneasiness. And sometimes I go and sit in my room for a while—to reassure myself… . You see I am used to an enclosure—the walls of a room—the walled-in streets of New York… . It's like suddenly stepping out of a cellar to the edge of eternal space, and looking down into nothing."

"Is that the way these rolling hillocks of Delaware County impress you?" he asked, laughing.

"Yes, Kelly. If I ever found myself in the Alps I believe the happiness would so utterly over-awe me that I'd remain in my hotel under the bed. What are you laughing at? Voluptates commendat rarior usus."

"Sit tua cura sequi, me duce tutus eris!" he laughed, mischievously testing her limit of Latin.

"Plus e medico quam e morbo periculi!" she answered, saucily.

"You cunning little thing!" he exclaimed: "vix a te videor posse tenere manus!"

"Di melius, quam nos moneamus talia quenquam!" she said, demurely; "Louis, we are becoming silly! Besides, I probably know more Latin than you do—as it was my mother's favourite relaxation to teach me to speak it. And I imagine that your limit was your last year at Harvard."

"Upon my word!" he exclaimed; "I never was so snubbed and patronised in all my life!"

"Beware, then!" she retorted, with an enchanting sideway glance: "noli me tangere!" At the same instant he was aware of her arm in light, friendly contact against his, and heard her musing aloud in deep contentment:

"Such perfect satisfaction to have you again, Louis. The world is a gray void without the gods."

And so, leisurely, they breasted the ascent and came out across the height-of-land. Here and there a silvery ghost of the shorn forest stood, now almost mercifully hidden in the green foliage of hard wood—worthlessly young as yet but beautiful.

From tree to tree flickered the brilliant woodpeckers—they of the solid crimson head and ivory-barred wings. The great vermilion-tufted cock-o'-the-woods called querulously; over the steel-blue stump-ponds the blue kingfishers soared against the blue. It was a sky world of breezy bushes and ruffled waters, of pathless fields and dense young woodlands, of limpid streams clattering over greenish white rocks, pouring into waterfalls, spreading through wild meadows set with iris and pink azalea.

"How is the work going, Louis?" she asked, glancing at him askance.

"It's stopped."

"A cause de—?"

"Je n'en sais rien, Valerie."

She flicked the harness with her whip, absently. He also leaned back, thoughtfully intent on the blue hills in the distance.

"Has not your desire to paint returned?"

"No."

"Do you know why?"

"Partly. I am up against a solid wall. There is no thoroughfare."

"Make one."

"Through the wall?"

"Straight through it."

"Ah, yes"—he murmured—"but what lies beyond?"

"It would spoil the pleasures of anticipation to know beforehand."

He turned to her: "You are good for me. Do you know it?"

"Querida said that, too. He said that I was an experience; and that all good work is made up of experiences that concern it only indirectly."

"Do you like Querida?" he asked, curiously.

"Sometimes."

"Not always?"

"Oh, yes, always more or less. But sometimes"—she was silent, her dark eyes dreaming, lips softly parted.

"What do you mean by that?" he inquired, carelessly.

"By what, Louis?" she asked, naïvely, interrupted in her day-dream.

"By hinting—that sometimes you like Querida—more than at others?"

"Why, I do," she said, frankly. "Besides, I don't hint things; I say them." She had turned her head to look at him. Their eyes met in silence for a few moments.

"You are funny about Querida," she said. "Don't you like him?"

"I have no reason to dislike him."

"Oh! Is it the case of Sabidius? 'Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare!'"

He laughed uneasily: "Oh, no, I think not… . You and he are such excellent friends that I certainly ought to like him anyway."

But she remained silent, musing; and on the edge of her upcurled lip he saw the faint smile lingering, then fading, leaving the oval face almost expressionless.

So they drove past the one-story post office where a group of young people stood awaiting the arrival of the stage with its battered mail bags; past the stump-pond where Valerie had caught her first and only fish, past a few weather-beaten farm houses, a white-washed church, a boarding house or two, a village store, a watering-trough, and then drove up to the wooden veranda where Rita rose from a rocker and came forward with hand outstretched.

"Hello, Rita!" he said, giving her hand a friendly shake. "Why didn't you drive down with Valerie?"

"I? That child would have burst into tears at such a suggestion."

"Probably," said Valerie, calmly: "I wanted him for myself. Now that I've had him I'll share him."

She sprang lightly to the veranda ignoring Neville's offered hand with a smile. A hired man took away the horse; a boy picked up his suit case and led the way.

"I'll be back in a moment," he said to Valerie and Rita.

That evening at supper, a weird rite where the burnt offering was rice pudding and the stewed sacrifice was prunes, Neville was presented to an interesting assemblage of the free-born.

There was the clerk, the drummer, the sales-lady, and ladies unsaleable and damaged by carping years; city-wearied fathers of youngsters who called their parents "pop" and "mom"; young mothers prematurely aged and neglectful of their coiffure and shoe-heels; simpering maidenhood, acid maidenhood, sophisticated maidenhood; shirt-waisted manhood, flippant manhood, full of strange slang and double negatives unresponsively suspicious manhood, and manhood disillusioned, prematurely tired, burnt out with the weariness of a sordid Harlem struggle.

Here in the height-of-land among scant pastures and the green charity which a spindling second-growth spread over the nakedness of rotting forest bones—here amid the wasted uplands and into this flimsy wooden building came the rank and file of the metropolis in search of air, of green, of sky, for ten days' surcease from toil and heat and the sad perplexities of those with slender means.

Neville, seated on the veranda with Valerie and Rita in the long summer twilight, looked around him at scenes quite new to him.

On the lumpy croquet ground where battered wickets and stakes awry constituted the centre of social activity after supper, some young girls were playing in partnership with young men, hatless, striped of shirt, and very, very yellow of foot-gear.

A social favourite, very jolly and corporeally redundant, sat in the hammock fanning herself and uttering screams of laughter at jests emanating from the boarding-house cut-up—a blonde young man with rah-rah hair and a brier pipe.

Children, neither very clean nor very dirty, tumbled noisily about the remains of a tennis court or played base-ball in the dusty road. Ominous sounds arose from the parlour piano, where a gaunt maiden lady rested one spare hand among the keys while the other languidly pawed the music of the "Holy City."

Somewhere in the house a baby was being spanked and sent to bed. There came the clatter of dishes from the wrecks of the rite in the kitchen, accompanied by the warm perfume of dishwater.

But, little by little the high stars came out, and the gray veil fell gently over unloveliness and squalour; little by little the raucous voices were hushed; the scuffle and clatter and the stringy noise of the piano died away, till, distantly, the wind awoke in the woods, and very far away the rushing music of a little brook sweetened the silence.

Rita, who had been reading yesterday's paper by the lamplight which streamed over her shoulder from the open parlour-window, sighed, stifled a yawn, laid the paper aside, and drew her pretty wrap around her shoulders.

"It's absurd," she said, plaintively, "but in this place I become horribly sleepy by nine o'clock. You won't mind if I go up, will you?"

"Not if you feel that way about it," he said, smiling.

"Oh, Rita!" said Valerie, reproachfully, "I thought we were going to row Louis about on the stump-pond!"

"I am too sleepy; I'd merely fall overboard," said Rita, simply, gathering up her bonbons. "Louis, you'll forgive me, won't you? I don't understand why, but that child never sleeps."

They rose to bid her good night. Valerie's finger tips rested a moment on Neville's sleeve in a light gesture of excuse for leaving him and of promise to return. Then she went away with Rita.

When she returned, the piazza was deserted except for Neville, who stood on the steps smoking and looking out across the misty waste.

"I usually go up with Rita," she said. "Rita is a dear. But do you know, I believe she is not a particularly happy girl."

"Why?"

"I don't know why… . After all, such a life—hers and mine—is only happy if you make it so… . And I don't believe she tries to make it so. Perhaps she doesn't care. She is very young—and very pretty—too young and pretty to be so indifferent—so tired."

She stood on the step behind and above him, looking down at his back and his well-set shoulders. They were inviting, those firm, broad, young shoulders of his; and she laid both hands on them.

"Shall I row you about in the flat-boat, Louis?"

"I'll do the paddling—"

"Not by any means. I like to row, if you please. I have cold cream and a pair of gloves, so that I shall acquire no blisters."

They walked together out to the road and along it, she holding to her skirts and his arm, until the star-lit pond came into view.

Afloat in the ancient, weedy craft he watched her slender strength mastering the clumsy oars—watched her, idly charmed with her beauty and the quaint, childish pleasure that she took in manoeuvring among the shoreward lily pads and stumps till clear water was reached and the little misty wavelets came slap! slap! against the bow.

"If you were Querida you'd sing in an exceedingly agreeable tenor," she observed.

"Not being Querida, and labouring further under the disadvantage of a barytone, I won't," he said.

"Please, Louis."

"Oh, very well—if you feel as romantic as that." And he began to sing:

"My wife's gone to the country, Hurrah! Hurrah!"

"Louis! Stop it! Do you know you are positively corrupt to do such a thing at such a time as this?"

"Well, it's all I know, Valerie—"

"I could cry!" she said, indignantly, and maintained a dangerous silence until they drifted into the still waters of the outlet where the starlight silvered the sedge-grass and feathery foliage formed a roof above.

Into the leafy tunnel they floated, oars shipped; she, cheek on hand, watching the fire-flies on the water; he, rid of his cigarette, motionless in the stern.

After they had drifted half a mile she seemed disinclined to resume the oars; so he crossed with her, swung the boat, and drove it foaming against the silent current.

On the return they said very little. She stood pensive, distraite, as he tied the boat, then—for the road was dark and uneven—took his arm and turned away beside him.

"I'm afraid I haven't been very amusing company," he ventured.

She tightened her arm in his—a momentary, gentle pressure:

"I'm merely too happy to talk," she said. "Does that answer satisfy you?"

Touched deeply, he took her hand which rested so lightly on his sleeve—a hand so soft and fine of texture—so cool and fresh and slender that the youth and fragrance of it drew his lips to it. Then he reversed it and kissed the palm.

"Why, Louis," she said, "I didn't think you could be so sentimental."

"Is that sentimental?"

"Isn't it?"

"It rather looks like it, doesn't it?"

"Rather."

"Did you mind?"

"No… . Only—you and I—it seems—superfluous. I don't think anything you do could make me like you more than I do."

"You sweet little thing!"

"No, only loyal, Kelly. I can never alter toward you."

"What's that? A vow!"

"Yes—of constancy and of friendship eternal."

"'Nomen amicitia est; nomen inane fides!—Friendship is only a name; constancy an empty title,'" he quoted.

"Do you believe that?"

"Constancy is an honest wish, but a dishonest promise," he said. "You know it lies with the gods, Valerie."

"So they say. But I know myself. And I know that, however I may ever care for anybody else, it can never be at your expense—at the cost of one atom of my regard for you. As I care for you now, so have I from the beginning; so will I to the end; care more for you, perhaps; but never less, Louis. And that I know."

More deeply moved than he perhaps cared to be, he walked on slowly in silence, measuring his step to hers. In the peace of the midnight world, in the peace of her presence, he was aware of a tranquillity, a rest that he had not known in weeks. Vaguely first, then uneasily, he remembered that he had not known it since her departure, and shook off the revelation with instinctive recoil—dismissed it, smiled at it to have done with it. For such things could not happen.

The woods were fragrant as they passed; a little rill, swelling from the thicket of tangled jewel-weed, welled up, bubbling in the starlight. She knelt down and drank from her cupped hands, and offered him the same sweet cup, holding it fragrantly to his lips.

And there, on their knees under the stars, he touched her full child-like lips with his; and, laughing, she let him kiss her again—but not a third time, swaying back from her knees to avoid him, then rising lithely to her feet.

"The poor nymph and the great god Kelly!" she said; "a new hero for the pantheon: a new dryad to weep over. Kelly, I believe your story of your golden cloud, now."

"Didn't you credit it before?"

"No."

"But now that I've kissed you, you do believe it?"

"Y-yes."

"Then to fix that belief more firmly—"

"Oh, no, you mustn't, Kelly—" she cried, her soft voice hinting of hidden laughter. "I'm quite sure that my belief is very firmly fixed. Hear me recite my creed. Credo! I believe that you are the great god Kelly, perfectly capable of travelling about wrapped in a golden cloud—"

"You are mocking at the gods!"

"No, I'm not. Who am I to affront Olympus?… Wh-what are you going to do, Kelly? Fly to the sacred mount with me?"

But she suffered his arm to remain around her waist as they moved slowly on through the darkness.

"How long are you going to stay? Tell me, Louis. I'm as tragically curious as Pandora and Psyche and Bluebeard's wife, melted into the one and eternal feminine."

"I'm going to-morrow."

"Oh-h," she said, softly.

He was silent. They walked on, she with her head bent a little.

"Didn't you want me to?" he asked at length.

"Not if you care to stay… . I never want what those I care for are indifferent about."

"I am not indifferent. I think I had better go."

"Is the reason important?"

"I don't know, Valerie—I don't really know."

He was thinking of this new and sweet familiarity—something suddenly born into being under the wide stars—something that had not been a moment since, and now was—something invoked by the vastness of earth and sky—something confirmed by the wind in the forest.

"I had better go," he said.

Her silence acquiesced; they turned into the ragged lawn, ascended the dew-wet steps; and then he released her waist.

The hallways were dark and deserted as they mounted the stairs side by side.

"This is my door," she said.

"Mine is on the next floor."

"Then—good night, Louis."

He took her hand in silence. After a moment she released it; laid both hands lightly on his shoulders, lifted her face and kissed him.

"Good night," she said. "You have made this a very happy day in my life. Shall I see you in the morning?"

"I'm afraid not. I left word to have a horse ready at daylight. It is not far from that, now."

"Then I shall not see you again?"

"Not until you come to New York."

"Couldn't you come back for a day? Querida is coming. Sammy and Harry Annan are coming up over Sunday. Couldn't you?"

"Valerie, dear, I could"—he checked himself; thought for a while until the strain of his set teeth aroused him to consciousness of his own emotion.

Rather white he looked at her, searching for the best phrase—for it was already threatening to be a matter of phrases now—of forced smiles—and some breathing spot fit for the leisure of self-examination.

"I'm going back to paint," he said. "Those commissions have waited long enough."

He strove to visualise his studio, to summon up the calm routine of the old regime—as though the colourless placidity of the past could steady him.

"Will you need me?" she asked.

"Later—of course. Just now I've a lot of men's figures to deal with—that symbolical affair for the new court house."

"Then you don't need me?"

"No."

She thought a moment, slim fingers resting on the knob of her door, standing partly turned away from him. Then, opening her door, she stepped inside, hesitated, looked back:

"Good-bye, Louis, dear," she said, gently.

Chapter 6

 

Neville had begun to see less and less of Valerie West. When she first returned from the country in September she had come to the studio and had given him three or four mornings on the portrait which he had begun during the previous summer. But the painting of it involved him in difficulties entirely foreign to him—difficulties born of technical timidity of the increasing and inexplicable lack of self-confidence. And deeply worried, he laid it aside, A dull, unreasoning anxiety possessed him. Those who had given him commissions to execute were commencing to importune him for results. He had never before disappointed any client. Valerie could be of very little service to him in the big mural decorations which, almost in despair, he had abruptly started. Here and there, in the imposing compositions designed for the Court House, a female figure, or group of figures, was required, but, in the main, male figures filled the preliminary cartoons—great law-givers and law-defenders of all ages and all lands, in robes and gowns of silks; in armour, in skins, in velvet and ermine—men wearing doublet, jack-coat, pourpoint; men in turban and caftan, men covered with mail of all kinds—armour of leather, of fibre, of lacquer, of quilted silk, of linked steel, Milanaise, iron cuirass; the emblazoned panoply of the Mongol paladins; Timour Melek's greaves of virgin gold; men of all nations and of all ages who fashioned or executed human law, from Moses to Caesar, from Mohammed to Genghis Kahn and the Golden Emperor, from Charlemagne to Napoleon, and down through those who made and upheld the laws in the Western world, beginning with Hiawatha, creator of the Iroquois Confederacy—the Great League.

His studio was a confusion of silks, cut velvets, tapestries, embroideries, carpets of the East, lay figures glittering with replicas of priceless armour. Delicate fabrics trailed over chair and floor almost under foot; inlaid and gem-hilted weapons, illuminated missals, glass-cased papyri, gilded zones, filets, girdles, robes of fur, hoods, wallets, helmets, hats, lay piled up, everywhere in methodical disorder. And into and out of the studio passed male models of all statures, all ages, venerable, bearded men, men in their prime, men with the hard-hammered features and thick, sinewy necks of gladiators, men slender and pallid as dreaming scholars, youths that might have worn the gold-red elf-locks and the shoulder cloak of Venice, youth chiselled in a beauty as dark and fierce as David wore when the mailed giant went crashing earthward under the smooth round pebble from his sling.

Valerie's turn in this splendid panoply was soon over. Even had she been so inclined there was, of course, no place for her to visit now, no place to sit and watch him among all these men. After hours, once or twice, she came in to tea—to gossip a little with the old-time ease, and barter with him epigram for jest, nonsense for inconsequence. Yet, subtly—after she had gone home—she felt the effort. Either he or she had imperceptibly changed; she knew not which was guilty; but she knew.

Besides, she herself was now in universal demand—and in the furor of her popularity she had been, from the beginning, forced to choose among a very few with whom she personally felt herself at ease, and to whom she had become confidently accustomed. Also, from the beginning, she had not found it necessary to sit undraped for many—a sculptor or two—Burleson and Gary Graves—Sam Ogilvy with his eternal mermaidens, Querida—nobody else. The other engagements had been for costume or, at most, for head and shoulders. Illustrators now clamoured for her in modish garments of the moment—in dinner gown, ball gown, afternoon, carriage, motor, walking, tennis, golf, riding costumes; poster artists made her pretty features popular; photographs of her in every style of indoor and outdoor garb decorated advertisements in the backs of monthly magazines. She was seen turning on the water in model bathtubs, offering the admiring reader a box of bonbons, demurely displaying a brand of hosiery, recommending cold cream, baked beans, railroad routes, tooth powder, and real-estate on Long Island.

Her beauty, the innocent loveliness of her features, her dainty modest charm, the enchanting outline and mould of her figure were beginning to make her celebrated. Already people about town—at the play, in the park, on avenue and street, in hotels and restaurants, were beginning to recognise her, follow her with approving or hostile eyes, turn their heads to watch her.

Theatrical agents wrote her, making attractive offers for an engagement where showgirls were the ornamental caryatids which upheld the three tottering unities along Broadway. She also had chances to wear very wonderful model gowns for next season at the Countess of Severn's new dressmaking, drawing-rooms whither all snobdom crowded and shoved to get near the trade-marked coronet, and where bewildering young ladies strolled haughtily about all day long, displaying to agitated Gotham the most startling gowns in the extravagant metropolis.

She had other opportunities, too—such as meeting several varieties of fashionable men of various ages—gentlemen prominently identified with the arts and sciences—the art of killing time and the science of enjoying the assassination. And some of these assorted gentlemen maintained extensive stables and drove tandems, spikes, and fours; and some were celebrated for their yachts, or motors, or prima-donnas, or business acumen, or charitable extravagances… . Yes, truly, Valerie West was beginning to have many opportunities in this generously philanthropic world. And she was making a great deal of money—for her—but nothing like what she might very easily have made. And she knew it, young as she was. For it does not take very long to learn about such things when a girl is attempting to earn her living in this altruistic world.

"She'll spread her wings and go one of these days," observed Archie Allaire to Rita Tevis, who was posing as Psyche for one of his clever, thinly brushed, high-keyed studies very much after the manner and palette of Chaplin when they resembled neither Chartrain nor Zier, nor any other artist temporarily in vogue. For he was an adaptable man, facile, adroit, a master navigator in trimming sail to the fitful breeze of popular favour. And his work was in great demand.

"She'll be decorating the tonneau of some big touring car with crested panels—and there'll be a bunch of orchids in the crystal holder, and a Chow dog beside her, defying the traffic squad—"

"No, she won't!" snapped Rita. "She's as likely to do that as she is to dine with you again."

Allaire, caught off his guard, scowled with unfeigned annoyance. Repeated essays to ingratiate himself with Valerie had finally resulted in a dinner at the Astor, and in her firm, polite, but uncompromising declination of all future invitations from him, either to sit for him or beside him under any circumstances and any conditions whatever.

"So that's your opinion, is it, Rita?" he inquired, keeping his light-blue eyes and his thin wet brush busy on his canvas. "Well, sister, take it from muh, she thinks she's the big noise in the Great White Alley; but they're giving her the giggle behind her back."

"That giggle may be directed at you, Archie," observed Rita, scornfully; "you're usually behind her back, you know, hoisting the C.Q.D."

"Which is all right, too," he said, apparently undisturbed; "but when she goes to Atlantic City with Querida—"

"That is an utter falsehood," retorted Rita, calmly. "Whoever told you that she went there with Querida, lied."

"You think so?"

"I know so! She went alone."

"Then we'll let it go at that," said Allaire so unpleasantly that Rita took fiery offence.

"There is not a man living who has the right to look sideways at Valerie West! Everybody knows it—Neville, Querida, Sam, John Burleson—even you know it! If a man or two has touched her finger tips—her waist—her lips, perhaps—no man has obtained more than that of her—dared more than that! I have never heard that any man has ever even ventured to offend her ears, unless"—she added with malice, "that is the reason that she accepts no more invitations from you and your intimate friends."

Allaire managed to smile and continue to paint. But later he found use for his palette knife—which was unusual in a painter as clever as he and whose pride was in his technical skill with materials used and applied premier coup.

With October came the opening of many theatres; a premature gaiety animated the hotels and restaurants; winter fabrics, hats, furs, gowns, appeared in shops; the glittering windows along Fifth Avenue reflected more limousines and fewer touring bodies passing. Later top hats reappeared on street and in lobby; and when the Opera reopened, Long Island, Jersey, and Westchester were already beginning to pour in cityward, followed later by Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbour. The police put on their new winter uniforms; furs were displayed in carriages, automobiles, and theatres; the beauty of the florist's windows became mellower, richer, and more splendid; the jewellery in the restaurants more gorgeous. Gotham was beginning to be its own again, jacked up by the Horse Show, the New Theatre, and the Opera; and by that energetic Advertising Trust Company with its branches, dependencies, and mergers, which is called Society, and which is a matter of eternal vigilance and desperate business instead of the relaxation of cultivated security in an accepted and acceptable order of things.

Among other minor incidents, almost local in character, the Academy and Society of American Artists opened its doors. And the exhibition averaged as well as it ever will, as badly as it ever had averaged. Allaire showed two portraits of fashionable women, done, this time, in the manner of Zorn, and quite as clever on the streaky surface. Sam Ogilvy proudly displayed another mermaid—Rita in the tub—and two babies from photographs and "chic"—very bad; but as usual it was very quickly marked sold.

Annan had a portrait of his sister Alice, poorly painted and even recognised by some of her more intimate friends. Clive Gail offered one of his marines—waves splashing and dashing all over the canvas so realistically that women instinctively stepped back and lifted their skirts, and men looked vaguely around for a waiter—at least Ogilvy said so. As for Neville, he had a single study to show—a full length—just the back and head and the soft contour of limbs melting into a luminously sombre background—a masterpiece in technical perfection, which was instantly purchased by a wise and Western millionaire, and which left the public staring but unmoved.

But it was José Querida who dominated the whole show, flooding everything with the splendour of his sunshine so that all else in the same room looked cold or tawdry or washed out. His canvas, with its superbly vigorous drawing, at once became the sensation of the exhibition. Sunday supplements reproduced it with a photograph of Querida looking amiably at a statuette of Venus which he held in his long, tapering fingers; magazines tried to print it in two colours, in three, in dozens, and made fireworks of it to Querida's inwardly suppressed agony, and their own satisfaction. Serious young men wrote "appreciations" about it; serious young women published instructive discourses concerning it in the daily papers. Somebody in the valuable columns of the Tribune inquired whether Querida's painting was meant to be symbolical; somebody in the Nation said yes; somebody in the Sun said no; somebody in something or other explained its psychological subtleties; somebody in something else screamed, "bosh!"

Meanwhile the discussion was a god-send to fashionable diners-out and to those cultivated leaders of society who prefer to talk through the Opera and philharmonic.

In what the educated daily press calls the "world of art" and the "realm of literature," Querida's picture was discussed intelligently and otherwise, but it was discussed—from the squalid table d'hôte, where unmanicured genius punctures the air with patois and punches holes in it with frenzied thumbs, to quiet, cultivated homes, where community of taste restricts the calling lists—from the noisy studio, where pianos and girls make evenings lively, to the austere bare boards or the velvet elegance of studios where authority and preciousness, and occasionally attainment, reside, and sometimes do not.

Cognatis maculis similis fera.

Neville was busy, but not too busy to go about in the evening among his own kind, and among other kinds, too. This unexpected resurgance within him of the social instinct, he made no attempt to account for to others or to himself. He had developed a mental and physical restlessness, which was not yet entirely nervous, but it had become sufficiently itching to stir him out of fatigue when the long day's work had ended—enough to drive him out of the studio—at first merely to roam about at hazard through the livelier sections of the city. But to the lonely, there is no lonelier place than a lively one; and the false brilliancy and gaiety drove him back upon himself and into his lair again, where for a while he remained meditating amid the sombre menace of looming canvases and the heavy futility of dull-gold hangings, and the mischievous malice of starlight splintering into a million incandescent rainbow rays through the sheet of glass above.

Out of this, after some days, he emerged, set in motion by his increasing restlessness. And it shoved him in the direction of his kind once more—and in the direction of other kinds.

He dined at his sister's in Seventy-ninth Street near Madison Avenue; he dined with the Grandcourts on Fifth Avenue; he decorated a few dances, embellished an opera box now and then, went to Lakewood and Tuxedo for week ends, rode for a few days at Hot Springs, frequented his clubs, frequented Stephanie, frequented Maxim's.

And all the while it seemed to him as though he were temporarily enduring something which required patience, which could not last forever, which must one day end in a great change, a complete transformation for himself, of himself, of the world around him and of his aim and hope and purpose in living. At moments, too, an odd sensation of expectancy came over him—the sense of waiting, of suppressed excitement. And he could not account for it.

Perhaps it concerned the finishing of his great mural frieze for the Court House—that is, the completion of the section begun in September. For, when it was done, and cleared out of his studio, and had been set in its place, framed by the rose and gold of marble and ormolu, a heavy reaction of relief set in, leaving him listless and indifferent at first, then idle, disinclined to begin the companion frieze; then again restless, discontented, tired, and lonely in that strange solitude which seemed to be growing wider and wider around him in rings of silence. Men praised and lauded the great frieze; and he strove to respond, to believe them—to believe in the work and in himself—strove to shake off the terrible discouragement invading him, lurking always near to reach out and touch him, slinking at his heels from street to street, from room to room, skulking always just beyond the shadows that his reading lamp cast.

Without envy, yet with profound sadness, he stood and faced the splendour of Querida's canvas. He had gone to Querida and taken him by both of his thin, olive-skinned hands, and had praised the work with a heart clean of anything unworthy. And Querida had laughed and displayed his handsome teeth, and returned compliment for compliment… . And Neville had seen, on his dresser, a photograph of Valerie, signed in her long, girlish, angular hand—"To José from Valerie"; and the date was of mid-winter.

Christmas came; he sent Valerie some furs and a note, and, before he went to Aiken to spend the holidays with his father and mother, he tried to get her on the telephone—tried half a dozen times. But she was either busy with business or with pleasure somewhere or other—and he never found her at home; so he went South without hearing from her.

After he arrived, it is true, he received from her a cigarette case and a very gay and frank Christmas greeting—happy and untroubled apparently, brimming with gossip, inconsequences, and nonsense. In it she thanked him for his letter and his gift, hoped he was happy with his parents, and expressed an almost conventional desire to see him on his return.

Then his parents came back to New York with him. Two days before New Year's Day they went to Spindrift House instead of sailing for Egypt, where for some years now they had been accustomed to spend the winters shivering at Shepherd's. And he and his sister and brother-in-law and Stephanie dined together that evening. But the plans they made to include him for a New Year's Eve home party remained uncertain as far as he was concerned. He was vague—could not promise—he himself knew not why. And they ceased to press him.

"You're growing thin and white," said Lily. "I believe you're getting painter's colic."

"House painters acquire that," he said, smiling. "I'm not a member of their union yet."

"Well, you must use as much white lead as they do on those enormous canvases of yours. Why don't you start on a trip around the world, Louis?"

He laughed.

Later, after he had taken his leave, the suggestion reoccurred to him. He took enough trouble to think about it the next morning; sent out his servant to amass a number of folders advertising world girdling tours of various attractions, read them while lunching, and sat and pondered. Why not? It might help. Because he certainly began to need help. He had gone quite stale. Querida was right; he ought to lie fallow. No ground could yield eternally without rest. Querida was clever enough to know that; and he had been stupid enough to ignore it—even disbelieve it, contemptuous of precept and proverb and wise saw, buoyed above apprehension by consciousness and faith in his own inexhaustible energy.

And, after all, something really seemed to have happened to him. He almost admitted it now for the first time—considered the proposition silently, wearily, without any definite idea of analysing it, without even the desire to solve it.

Somehow, at some time, he had lost pleasure in his powers, faith in his capacity, desire for the future. What had satisfied him yesterday, to-day became contemptible. Farther than ever, farther than the farthest, stars receded the phantoms of the great Masters. What they believed and endured and wrought and achieved seemed now not only hopelessly beyond any comprehension or attainment of his, but even beyond hope of humble discipleship.

And always, horribly, like an obsession, was creeping over him in these days the conviction of some similarity between his work and the thin, clear, clever brush-work of Allaire—with all its mastery of ways and means, all its triumph over technical difficulties, all its tricks and subtle appeals, and its falsity, and its glamour.

Reflection, retrospection sickened him. It was snowing and growing late when he wrote to a steamship agent making inquiries and asking for plans of staterooms.

Then he had tea, alone there in the early winter dusk, with the firelight playing over Gladys who sat in the full heat of the blaze, licking her only kitten, embracing its neck with one maternal paw.

He dressed about six, intending to dine somewhere alone that New Year's Eve. The somewhere, as usual, ended at the Syrinx Club—or rather at the snowy portal—for there he collided with Samuel Strathclyde Ogilvy and Henry Knickerbocker Annan, and was seized and compelled to perform with them on the snowy sidewalk, a kind of round dance resembling a pow-wow, which utterly scandalised the perfectly respectable club porter, and immensely interested the chauffeurs of a row of taxicabs in waiting.

"Come! Let up! This isn't the most dignified performance I ever assisted at," he protested.

"Who said it was dignified?" demanded Ogilvy. "We're not hunting for dignity. Harry and I came here in a hurry to find an undignified substitute for John Burleson. You're the man!"

"Certainly," said Annan, "you're the sort of cheerful ass we need in our business. Come on! Some of these taxis belong to us—"

"Where do you want me to go, you crazy—"

"Now be nice, Louis," he said, soothingly; "play pretty and don't kick and scream. Burleson was going with us to see the old year out at the Cafe Gigolette, but he's got laryngitis or some similar species of pip—"

"I don't want to go—"

"You've got to, dear friend. We've engaged a table for six—"

"Six!"

"Sure, dearie. In the college of experience coeducation is a necessary evil. Step lively, son!"

"Who is going?"

"One dream, one vision, one hallucination—" he wafted three kisses from his gloved finger tips in the general direction of Broadway—"and you, and Samuel, and I. Me lord, the taxi waits!"

"Now, Harry, I'm not feeling particularly cheerful—"

"But you will, dear friend; you will soon be feeling the Fifty-seven Varieties of cheerfulness. All kinds of society will be at the Gigolette—good, bad, fashionable, semi-fashionable—all imbued with the intellectual and commendable curiosity to see somebody 'start something.' And," he added, modestly, "Sam and I are going to see what can be accomplished—"

"No; I won't go—"

But they fell upon him and fairly slid him into a taxi, beckoning two other similar vehicles to follow in procession.

"Now, dearie," simpered Sam, "don't you feel better?"

Neville laughed and smoothed out the nap of his top hat.

They made three stops at three imposing looking apartment hotels between Sixth Avenue and Broadway—The Daisy, The Gwendolyn, The Sans Souci—where negro porters and hallboys were gorgeously conspicuous and the clerk at the desk seemed to be unusually popular with the guests. And after every stop there ensued a shifting of passengers in the taxicabs, until Neville found himself occupying the rear taxi in the procession accompanied by a lively young lady in pink silk and swansdown—a piquant face and pretty figure, white and smooth and inclined to a plumpness so far successfully contended with by her corset maker.

"I have on my very oldest gown," she explained with violet-eyed animation, patting her freshly dressed hair with two smooth little hands loaded with diamonds and turquoises. "I'm afraid somebody will start something and then they'll throw confetti, and somebody will think it's funny to aim champagne corks at you. So I've come prepared," she added, looking up at him with a challenge to deny her beauty. "By the way," she said, "I'm Mazie Gray. Nobody had the civility to tell you, did they?"

"They said something… . I'm Louis Neville," he replied, smiling.

"Are you?" she laughed. "Well, you may take it from mother that you're as cute as your name, Louis. Who was it they had all framed up to give me my cues? That big Burleson gentleman who'd starve if he had to laugh for a living, wasn't it? Can you laugh, child?"

"A few, Mazie. It is my only Sunday accomplishment."

"Dearie," she added, correcting him.

"It is my only accomplishment, dearie."

"That will be about all—for a beginning!" She laughed as the cab stopped at the red awning and Neville aided her to descend.

Steps, vestibules, stairs, cloak-rooms were crowded with jolly, clamouring throngs flourishing horns, canes, rattles, and dusters decked with brilliant ribbons. Already some bore marks of premature encounters with confetti and cocktails.

Waiters and head-waiters went gliding and scurrying about, assigning guests to tables reserved months in advance. Pages in flame-coloured and gold uniforms lifted the silken rope that stretched its barrier between the impatient crowd and the tables; managers verified offered credentials and escorted laughing parties to spaces bespoken.

Two orchestras, relieving each other, fiddled and tooted continuously; great mounds of flowers, smilax, ropes of evergreens, multi-tinted electroliers made the vast salon gay and filled it with perfume.

Even in the beginning it was lively enough though not yet boisterous in the city where all New York was dining and preparing for eventualities; the eventualities being that noisy mid-winter madness which seizes the metropolis when the birth of the New Year is imminent.

It is a strange evolution, a strange condition, a state of mind not to be logically accounted for. It is not accurate to say that the nicer people, the better sort, hold aloof; because some of them do not. And in this uproarious carnival the better sort are as likely to misbehave as are the worse; and they have done it, and do it, and probably will continue to say and do and tolerate and permit inanities in themselves and in others that, at other moments, they would regard as insanities—and rightly.

Around every table, rosily illuminated, laughter rang. White throats and shoulders glimmered, jewels sparkled, the clear crystalline shock of glasses touching glasses rang continual accompaniment to the music and the breezy confusion of voices.

Here and there, in premonition of the eventual, the comet-like passage of streaming confetti was blocked by bare arms upflung to shield laughing faces; arms that flashed with splendid jewels on wrist and finger.

Neville, coolly surveying the room, recognised many, responding to recognition with a laugh, a gesture, or with glass uplifted.

"Stop making goo-goos," cried Mazie, dropping her hand over his wrist. "Listen, and I'll be imprudent enough to tell you the very latest toast—" She leaned nearer, opening her fan with a daring laugh; but Ogilvy wouldn't have it.

"This is no time for single sentiment!" he shouted. "Everybody should be perfectly plural to-night—everything should be plural, multiple, diffuse, all embracing, general, polydipsiatic, polygynyatic, polyandryatic!"

"What's polyandryatic?" demanded Mazie in astonishment.

"It means everybody is everybody else's! I'm yours and you're mine but everybody else owns us and we own everybody."

"Hurrah!" shouted Annan. "Hear—hear! Where is the fair and total stranger who is going to steal the first kiss from me? Somebody count three before the rush begins—"

A ball of roses struck him squarely on the mouth; a furious shower of confetti followed. For a few moments the volleys became general, then the wild interchange of civilities subsided, and the cries of laughter died away and were lost in the loud animated hum which never ceased under the gay uproar of the music.

When they played the barcarole from Contes d'Hoffman everybody sang it and rose to their feet cheering the beautiful prima donna with whom the song was so closely identified, and who made one of a gay group at a flower-smothered table.

And she rose and laughingly acknowledged the plaudits; but they wouldn't let her alone until she mounted her chair and sang it in solo for them; and then the vast salon went wild.

Neville, surveying the vicinity, recognised people he never dreamed would have appeared in such a place—here a celebrated architect and his pretty wife entertaining a jolly party, there a well-known lawyer and somebody else's pretty wife; and there were men well known at fashionable clubs and women known in fashionable sets, and men and women characteristic of quieter sets, plainly a little uncertain and surprised to find themselves there. And he recognised assorted lights of the "profession," masculine and feminine; and one or two beautiful meteors that were falling athwart the underworld, leaving fading trails of incandescence in their jewelled wake.

The noise began to stun him; he laughed and talked and sang with the others, distinguishing neither his own voice nor the replies. For the tumult grew as the hour advanced toward midnight, gathering steadily in strength, in license, in abandon.

And now, as the minute hands on the big gilded clock twitched nearer and nearer to midnight, the racket became terrific, swelling, roaring into an infernal din as the raucous blast of horns increased in the streets outside and the whistles began to sound over the city from Westchester to the Bay, from Long Island to the Palisades.

Sheer noise, stupefying, abominable, incredible, unending, greeted the birth of the New Year; they were dancing in circles, singing, cheering amid the crash of glasses. Table-cloths, silken gowns, flowers were crushed and trampled under foot; flushed faces looked into strange faces, laughing; eyes strange to other eyes smiled; strange hands exchanged clasps with hands unknown; the whirl had become a madness.

And, suddenly, in its vortex, Neville saw Valerie West. Somebody had set her on a table amid the silver and flowers and splintered crystal. Her face was flushed, eyes and mouth brilliant, her gown almost torn from her left shoulder and fluttering around the lovely arm in wisps and rags of silk and lace. Querida supported her there.

They pelted her with flowers and confetti, and she threw roses back at everybody, snatching her ammunition from a great basket which Querida held for her.

Ogilvy and Annan saw her and opened fire on her with a cheer, and she recognised them and replied with volleys of rosebuds—was in the act of hurling her last blossom—caught sight of Neville where he stood with Mazie on a chair behind him, her arms resting on his shoulders. And the last rose dropped from her hand.

Querida turned, too, inquiringly; recognised Neville; and for a second his olive cheeks reddened; then with a gay laugh he passed his arm around Valerie and, coolly facing the bombardment of confetti and flowers, swung her from the table to the floor.

A furious little battle of flowers began at his own table, but Neville was already lost in the throng, making his way toward the door, pelted, shouldered, blocked, tormented—but, indifferent, unresponsive, forcing his path to the outer air.

Once or twice voices called his name, but he scarcely heard them. Then a hand caught at his; and a breathless voice whispered:

"Are you going?"

"Yes," he said, dully.

"Why?"

"I've had enough—of the New Year."

Breathing fast, the colour in her face coming and going, she stood, vivid lips parted, regarding him. Then, in a low voice:

"I didn't know you were to be here, Louis."

"Nor I. It was an accident."

"Who was the—girl—"

"What girl?"

"She stood behind you with her hands on your shoulders."

"How the devil do I know," he said, savagely—"her name's Mazie—something—or—other."

"Did you bring her?"

"Yes. Did Querida bring you?" he asked, insolently.

She looked at him in a confused, bewildered way—laid her hand on his sleeve with an impulse as though he had been about to strike her.

He no longer knew what he was doing in the sudden surge of unreasoning anger that possessed him; he shook her hand from his sleeve and turned.

And the next moment, on the stairs, she was beside him again, slender, pale, close to his shoulder, descending the great staircase beside him, one white-gloved hand resting lightly within his arm.

Neither spoke. At the cloak-room she turned and looked at him—stood a moment slowly tearing the orchids from her breast and dropping the crushed petals underfoot.

A maid brought her fur coat—his gift; a page brought his own coat and hat.

"Will you call a cab?"

He turned and spoke to the porter. Then they waited, side by side, in silence.

When the taxicab arrived he turned to give the porter her address, but she had forestalled him. And he entered the narrow vehicle; and they sat through the snowy journey in utter silence until the cab drew up at his door.

Then he said: "Are you not going home?"

"Not yet."

They descended, stood in the falling snow while he settled with the driver, then entered the great building, ascended in the elevator, and stepped out at his door.

He found his latch-key; the door swung slowly open on darkness.

Chapter 7

 

An electric lamp was burning in the hallway; he threw open the connecting doors of the studio where a light gleamed high on the ceiling, and stood aside for her to pass him.

She stepped across the threshold into the subdued radiance, stood for a moment undecided, then:

"Are you coming in?" she asked, cheerfully, quite aware of his ill-temper. "Because if you are, you may take off my coat for me."

He crossed the threshold in silence, and divested her of the fur garment which was all sparkling with melting snow.

"Do let's enjoy the firelight," she said, turning out the single ceiling lamp; "and please find some nice, big crackly logs for the fire, Kelly!—there's a treasure!"

His frowning visage said: "Don't pretend that it's all perfectly pleasant between us"; but he turned without speaking, cleared a big arm-chair of its pile of silks, velvets, and antique weapons, and pushed it to the edge of the hearth. Every movement he made, his every attitude was characterised by a sulky dignity which she found rather funny, now that the first inexplicable consternation of meeting him had subsided. And already she was wondering just what it was that had startled her; why she had left the café with him; why he had left; why he seemed to be vexed with her. For her conscience, in regard to him, was perfectly clear and serene.

"Now the logs, Kelly, dear," she said, "the kind that catch fire in a second and make frying-pan music, please."

He laid three or four logs of yellow birch across the bed of coals. The blaze caught swiftly, mounting in a broad sheet of yellow flame, making their faces brilliant in the darkness; and the tall shadows leaped across floor and wall and towered, wavering above them from the ruddy ceiling.

"Kelly!"

"What?"

"I wish you a Happy New Year."

"Thank you. I wish you the same."

"Come over here and curl up on the hearth and drop your head back on my knees, and tell me what is the trouble—you sulky boy!"

He did not appear to hear her.

"Please?—" with a slight rising inflection.

"What is the use of pretending?" he said, shortly.

"Pretending!" she repeated, mimicking him delightedly. Then with a clear, frank laugh: "Oh, you great, big infant! The idea of you being the famous painter Louis Neville! I wish there was a nursery here. I'd place you in it and let you pout!"

"That's more pretence," he said, "and you know it."

"What silly things you do say, Louis! As though people could find life endurable if they did not pretend. Of course I'm pretending. And if a girl pretends hard enough it sometimes comes true."

"What comes true?"

"Ah!—you ask me too much… . Well, for example, if I pretend I don't mind your ill-temper it may come true that you will be amiable to me before I go home."

There was no smile from him, no response. The warmth of the burning logs deepened the colour in her cold cheeks. Snow crystals on her dark hair melted into iris-rayed drops. She stretched her arms to the fire, and her eyes fell on Gladys and her kitten, slumbering, softly embraced.

"Oh, do look, Kelly! How perfectly sweet and cunning! Gladys has her front paws right around the kitten's neck."

Impulsively she knelt down, burying her face in the fluffy heap; the kitten partly opened its bluish eyes; the mother-cat stretched her legs, yawned, glanced up, and began to lick the kitten, purring loudly.

For a moment or two the girl caressed the drowsy cats, then, rising, she resumed her seat, sinking back deeply into the arm-chair and casting a sidelong and uncertain glance at Neville.

The flames burned steadily, noiselessly, now; nothing else stirred in the studio; there was no sound save the ghostly whisper of driving snow blotting the glass roof above.

Her gaze wandered over the silken disorder in the studio, arrested here and there as the firelight gleamed on bits of armour—on polished corselet and helmet and the tall hilts of swords. Then she looked upward where the high canvas loomed a vast expanse of gray, untouched except for the brushed-in outlines of men in shadowy processional.

She watched Neville, who had begun to prowl about in the disorder of the place, stepping over trailing velvets, avoiding manikins armed cap-a-pie, moving restlessly, aimlessly. And her eyes followed his indecision with a smile that gradually became perplexed and then a little troubled.

For even in the uncertain firelight she was aware of the change in his face—of features once boyish and familiar that seemed now to have settled into a sterner, darker mould—a visage that was too lean for his age—a face already haunted of shadows; a mature face—the face of a man who had known unhappiness.

He had paused, now, head lifted, eyes fixed on vast canvas above. And for a long while he stood there leaning sideways against a ladder, apparently oblivious of her.

Time lagged, halted—then sped forward, slyly robbing him of minutes of which his senses possessed no record. But minutes had come and gone while he stood there thinking, unconscious of the trick time played him—for the fire was already burning low again and the tall clock in the shadows pointed with stiff and ancient hands to the death of another hour and the birth of yet another; and the old-time bell chimed impartially for both with a shift and slide of creaking weights and wheels.

He lifted his head abruptly and looked at Valerie, who lay curled up in her chair, eyes closed, dark lashes resting on her cheeks.

As he passed her chair and returned to place more logs on the fire she opened her eyes and looked up at him. The curve of her mouth grew softly humorous.

"I'd much prefer my own bed," she said, "if this is all you have to say to me."

"Had you anything to say to me?" he asked, unsmiling.

"About what, Kelly, dear?"

"God knows; I don't."

"Listen to this very cross and cranky young man!" she exclaimed, sitting up and winking her eyes in the rushing brilliancy of the blaze. "He is neither a very gracious host, nor a very reasonable one; nor yet particularly nice to a girl who left a perfectly good party for an hour with him."

She stole a glance at him, and her gaze softened:

"Perhaps," she said aloud to herself, "he is not really very cross; perhaps he is only tired—or in trouble. Otherwise his voice and manners are scarcely pardonable—even by me."

He stood regarding the flames with narrowing gaze for a few moments, then, hands in his pockets, walked over to his chair once more and dropped into it.

A slight flush stole into her cheeks; but it went as it came. She rose, crossed to where he sat and stood looking down at him.

"What is the matter?"

"With me?" in crude pretence of surprise.

"Of course. I am happy enough. What troubles you?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"Then—what troubles us?" she persisted. "What has gone wrong between us, Kelly, dear? Because we mustn't let it, you know," she added, slowly, shaking her head.

"Has anything gone wrong with us?" he asked, sullenly.

"Evidently. I don't know what it is. I'm keeping my composure and controlling my temper until I find out. You know what that dreadful temper of mine can be?" She added, smiling: "Well, then, please beware of it unless you are ready to talk sensibly. Are you?"

"What is it you wish me to say?"

"How perfectly horrid you can be!" she exclaimed, "I never knew you could be like this? Do you want a girl to go on her knees to you? I care enough for our friendship to do it—but I won't!"

Her mood was altering:

"You're a brute, Kelly, to make me miserable. I was having such a good time at the Gigolette when I suddenly saw you—your expression—and—I don't even yet know why, but every bit of joy went out of everything for me—"

"I was going out, too," he said, laughing. "Why didn't you remain? Your gay spirits would have returned untroubled after my departure."

There was an ugly sound to his laugh which checked her, left her silent for a moment. Then:

"Did you disapprove of me?" she asked, curiously. "Was that it?"

"No. You can take care of yourself, I fancy."

"I have had to," she said, gravely.

He was silent.

She added with a light laugh not perfectly genuine:

"I suppose I am experiencing with you what all mortals experience when they become entangled with the gods."

"What is that?"

"Unhappiness. All the others experienced it—Proserpine, Helen, poor little Psyche—every nice girl who ever became mixed up with the Olympians had a bad half hour of it sooner or later. And to-night the great god Kelly has veiled his face from me, and I'm on my knees at his altar sacrificing every shred of sweet temper to propitiate him. Now, mighty and sulky oracle! what has happened to displease you?"

He said: "If there seems to be any constraint—if anything has altered our pleasant intimacy, I don't know what it is any more than you do, Valerie."

"Then there is something!"

"I have not said so."

"Well, then, I say so," she said, impatiently. "And I say, also, that whatever threatens our excellent understanding ought to be hunted out and destroyed. Shall we do it together, Louis?"

He said nothing.

"Come to the fire and talk it over like two sensible people. Will you? And please pull that sofa around to the blaze for me. Thank you. This, Kelly, is our bed of justice."

She drew the cushions under her head and nestled down in the full warmth of the hearth.

"Le lit de justice," she repeated, gaily. "Here I preside, possessing inquisitorial power and prerogative, and exercising here to-night the high justice, the middle, and the low. Now hale before me those skulking knaves, Doubt, Suspicion, and Distrust, and you and I will make short work of them. Pull 'em along by their ears, Louis! This Court means to sit all night if necessary!"

She laughed merrily, raised herself on one arm, and looked him straight in the eyes:

"Louis!"

"What?"

"Do you doubt me?"

"Doubt what?"

"That my friendship for you is as warm as the moment it began?"

He said, unsmiling: "People meet as we met, become friends—very good, very close friends—in that sort of friendship which is governed by chance and environment. The hazard that throws two people into each other's company is the same hazard that separates them. It is not significant either way… . I liked you—missed you… . Our companionship had been pleasant."

"Very," she said, quietly.

He nodded: "Then chance became busy; your duties led you elsewhere—mine set me adrift in channels once familiar—"

"Is that all you see in our estrangement?"

"What?" he asked, abruptly.

"Estrangement," she repeated, tranquilly. "That is the real word for it. Because the old intimacy is gone. And now we both admit it."

"We have had no opportunity to be together this—"

"We once made opportunities."

"We have had no time—"

"We halted time, hastened it, dictated to it, ruled it—once."

"Then explain it otherwise if you can."

"I am trying to—with God's help. Will you aid me, too?"

Her sudden seriousness and emotion startled him.

"Louis, if our estrangement is important enough for us to notice at all, it is important enough to analyse, isn't it?"

"I have analysed the reasons—"

"Truthfully?"

"I think so—as far as I have gone—"

"Let us go farther, then—to the end."

"But there is no particular significance—"

"Isn't there?"

"I don't know. After all, why did you leave that café? Why did I? Why are we together, now—here in your studio, and utterly miserable at one o'clock of the New Year's morning? For you and I are unhappy and ill at ease; and you and I are talking at cross purposes, groping, evading, fencing with words. If there is nothing significant in the friendship we gave each other from the hour we met—it is not worth the self-deception you are content with."

"Self-deception!" he repeated, flushing up.

"Yes. Because you do care more for me than what you have said about our friendship indicates… . And I care more for your regard than you seem willing to recognise—"

"I am very glad to—"

"Listen, Kelly. Can't we be honest with ourselves and with each other? Because—our being here, now—my leaving that place in the way I did—surprises me. I want to find out why there has been confusion, constraint, somewhere—there is something to clear up between us—I have felt that, vaguely, at moments; now I know it. Let us try to find out what it is, what is steadily undermining our friendship."

"Nothing, Valerie," he said, smiling. "I am as fond of you as ever. Only you have found time for other friendships. Your life has become more interesting, fuller, happier—"

"Not happier. I realise that, now, as you say it." She glanced around her; swiftly her dark eyes passed over things familiar. "I was happier here than I have ever been in all my life," she said. "I love this room—and everything in it. You know I do, Louis. But I couldn't very well come here when you were using all those models. If you think that I have neglected you, it is a silly and unfair thing to think. If I did neglect you I couldn't help it. And you didn't seem to care."

He shrugged and looked up at the outlined men's figures partly covering the canvas above them. Her gaze followed his, then again she raised herself on one elbow and looked around her, searching with quick eyes among the shadows.

"Where is my portrait?"

"Behind the tapestry."

"Have you abandoned it?"

"I don't know."

Her smile became tremulous: "Are you going to abandon the original, too?"

"I never possessed very much of you, did I?" he said, sulkily; and looked up at her quick exclamation of anger and surprise.

"What do you mean? You had all of me worth having—" there came a quick catch, in her throat—"you had all there is to me—confidence in you, gratitude for your friendship, deep, happy response to your every mood—my unquestioning love and esteem—"

"Your love?" he repeated, with an unpleasant laugh.

"What else do you call it?" she demanded, fiercely. "Is there a name less hackneyed for it? If there is, teach it to me. Yet—if ever a girl truly loved a man, I have loved you. And I do love you, dearly, honestly, cleanly, without other excuse than that, until to-night, you have been sweet to me and made me happier and better than I have ever been."

He sprang to his feet confused, deeply moved, suddenly ashamed of his own inexplicable attitude that seemed to be driving him into a bitterness that had no reason.

"Valerie," he began, but she interrupted him:

"I ask you, Kelly, to look back with me over our brief and happy companionship—over the hours together, over all you have done for me—"

"Have you done less for me?"

"I? What have I done?"

"You say you have given me—love."

"I have—with all my heart and soul. And, now that I think of it, I have given you more—I have given you all that goes with love—an unselfish admiration; a quick sympathy in your perplexities; quiet solicitude in your silences, in your aloof and troubled moments." She leaned nearer, a brighter flush on either cheek:

"Louis, I have given you more than that; I gave you my bodily self for your work—gave it to you first of all—came first of all to you—came as a novice, ignorant, frightened—and what you did for me then—what you were to me at that time—I can never, never forget. And that is why I overlook your injustice to me now!"

She sat up on the sofa's edge balanced forward between her arms, fingers nervously working at the silken edges of the upholstery.

"You ought never to have doubted my interest and affection," she said. "In my heart I have not doubted yours—never—except to-night. And it makes me perfectly wretched."

"I did not mean—"

"Yes, you did! There was something about you—your expression—when you saw me throwing roses at everybody—that hurt me—and you meant to."

"With Querida's arm around you, did you expect me to smile?" he asked, savagely.

"Was it that?" she demanded, astonished.

"What?"

"Querida's arm—" She hesitated, gazing straight into his eyes in utter amazement.

"It wasn't that?" she repeated. "Was it?… You never cared about such petty things, did you? Did you? Do you care? Because I never dreamed that you cared… . What has a little imprudence—a little silly mischief—to do with our friendship? Has it anything to do with it? You've never said anything—and … I've flirted—I've been spoons on men—you knew it. Besides, I've nearly always told you. I've told you without thinking it could possibly matter to you—to you of all men! What do you care what I do?—as long as I am to you what I have always been?"

"I—don't—care."

"Of course not. How can you?" She leaned nearer, dark and curious gaze searching his. Then, with a nervous laugh voicing the impossible—"You are not in love with me—that way. Are you?" she asked, scarcely realising what she was saying.

"No," he said, forcing a smile. "Are you with me?"

She flushed scarlet:

"Kelly, I never thought—dreamed—hoped—" Her voice caught in her throat a moment; "I—such a matter has not occurred to me." She looked at him partly dismayed, partly confused, unable now to understand him—or even herself.

"You know—that kind of love—" she began—"real love, never has happened to me. You didn't think that, did you?—because—just because I did flirt a little with you? It didn't mean anything serious—anything of that kind. Kelly, dear, have you mistaken me? Is that what annoys you? Were you afraid I was silly enough, mad enough to—to really think of you—in that way?"

"No."

"Oh, I was sure you couldn't believe it of me. See how perfectly frank and honest I have been with you. Why, you never were sentimental—and a girl isn't unless a man begins it! You never kissed me—except last summer when you were going away—and both of our hearts were pretty full—"

"Wait," he said, suddenly exasperated, "are you trying to make me understand that you haven't the slightest real emotion concerning me—concerning me as a man—like other men?"

She looked at him, still confused and distressed, still determined he should not misunderstand her:

"I don't know what you mean; truly I don't. I'm only trying to make you believe that I am not guilty of thinking—wishing—of pretending that in our frank companionship there lay concealed anything of—of deeper significance—"

"Suppose—it were true?" he said.

"But it is not true!" she retorted angrily—and looked up, caught his gaze, and her breath failed her.

"Suppose it were true—for example," he repeated. "Suppose you did find that you or I were capable of—deeper—"

"Louis! Louis! Do you realise what you are saying to me? Do you understand what you are doing to the old order of things between us—to the old confidences, the old content, the happiness, the—the innocence of our life together? Do you? Do you even care?"

"Care? Yes—I care."

"Because," she said, excitedly, "if it is to be—that way with you—I—I can not help you—be of use to you here in the studio as I have been… . Am I taking you too seriously? You do not mean that you really could ever love me, or I you, do you? You mean that—that you just want me back again—as I was—as we were—perfectly content to be together. That is what you mean, isn't it, Kelly, dear?" she asked, piteously.

He looked into her flushed and distressed face:

"Yes," he said, "that is exactly what I mean, Valerie—you dear, generous, clear-seeing girl! I just wanted you back again; I miss you; I am perfectly wretched without you, and that is all the trouble. Will you come?"

"I—don't—know. Why did you say such a thing?"

"Forgive me, dear!"

She slowly shook her head:

"You've made me think of—things," she said. "You shouldn't ever have done it."

"Done what, Valerie?"

"What you did—what you said—which makes it impossible for me to—to ever again be what I have been to you—even pose for you—as I did—"

"You mean that you won't pose for me any more?" he asked, aghast.

"Only—in costume." She sat on the edge of the sofa, head averted, looking steadily down at the hearth below. There was a pink spot on either cheek.

He thought a moment. "Valerie," he said, "I believe we had better finish what we have only begun to say."

"Is there—anything more?" she asked, unsmiling.

"Ask yourself. Do you suppose things can be left this way between us—all the happiness and the confidence—and the innocence, as you say, destroyed?"

"What more is there to say," she demanded, coldly.

"Shall—I—say it?" he stammered.

She looked up, startled, scarcely recognising the voice as his—scarcely now recognising his altered features.

"What is the matter with you?" she exclaimed nervously.

"Good God," he said, hoarsely, "can't you see I've gone quite mad about you!"

"About—me!" she repeated, blankly.

"About you—Valerie West. Can't you see it? Didn't you know it? Hasn't it been plain enough to you—even if it hasn't been to me?"

"Louis! Louis!" she cried in hurt astonishment, "what have you said to me?"

"That I'm mad about you, and I am. And it's been so—for months—always—ever since the very first! I must have been crazy not to realise it. I've been fool enough not to understand what has been the matter. Now you know the truth, Valerie!" He sprang to his feet, took a short turn or two before the hearth, then, catching sight of her face in its colourless dismay and consternation:

"I suppose you don't care a damn for me—that way!" he said, with a mirthless laugh.

"What!" she whispered, bewildered by his violence. Then: "Do you mean that you are in love with me!"

"Utterly, hopelessly—" his voice broke and he stood with hands clenched, unable to utter a word.

She sat up very straight and pale, the firelight gleaming on her neck and shoulders. After a moment his voice came back to his choked throat:

"I love you better than anything in the world." he said in unsteady tones. "And that is what has come between us. Do you think it is something we had better hunt down and destroy—this love that has come between us?"

"Is—is that true?" she asked in the awed voice of a child.

"It seems to be," he managed to say. She slid stiffly to the floor and stood leaning against the sofa's edge, looking at him wide-eyed as a schoolgirl.

"It never occurred to you what the real trouble might be," he asked, "did it?"

She shook her head mechanically.

"Well, we know now. Your court of inquiry has brought out the truth after all."

She only stared at him, fascinated. No colour had returned to her cheeks.

He began to pace the hearth again, lip caught savagely between his teeth.

"You are no more amazed than I am to learn the truth," he said. "I never supposed it was that… . And it's been that from the moment I laid eyes on you. I know it now. I'm learning, you see—learning not to lie to myself or to you… . Learning other things, too—God knows what—if this is love—this utter—suffering—"

He swung on his heel and began to pace the glimmering tiles toward her:

"Discontent, apathy, unhappiness, loneliness—the hidden ache which merely meant I missed you when you were not here—when I was not beside you—all these are now explained before your bed of justice. Your court has heard the truth to-night; and you, Valerie, are armed with justice—the high, the middle, and the low."

Pale, mute, she raised her dark eyes and met his gaze.

In the throbbing silence he heard his heart heavy in his breast; and now she heard her own, rapid, terrifying her, hurrying her she knew not whither. And again, trembling, she covered her eyes with her hands.

"Valerie," he said, in anguish, "come back to me. I will not ask you to love me if you cannot. Only come back. I—can't—endure it—without you."

There was no response.

He stepped nearer, touched her hands, drew them from her face—revealing its pallid loveliness—pressed them to his lips, to his face; drew them against his own shoulders—closer, till they fell limply around his neck.

She uttered a low cry: "Louis!" Then:

"It—it is all over—with us," she faltered. "I—had never thought of you—this way."

"Can you think of me this way, now?"

"I—can't help it."

"Dearest—dearest—" he stammered, and kissed her unresponsive lips, her throat, her hair. She only gazed silently at the man whose arms held her tightly imprisoned.

Under the torn lace and silk one bare shoulder glimmered; and he kissed it, touched the pale veins with his lips, drew the arm from his neck and kissed elbow, wrist, and palm, and every slender finger; and still she looked at him as though dazed. A lassitude, heavy, agreeable to endure, possessed her. She yielded to the sense of fatigue—to the confused sweetness that invaded her; every pulse in her body beat its assent, every breath consented.

"Will you try to care for me, Valerie?"

"You know I will."

"With all your heart?" he asked, trembling.

"I do already."

"Will you give yourself to me?"

There was a second's hesitation; then with a sudden movement she dropped her face on his shoulder. After a moment her voice came, very small, smothered:

"What did you mean, Louis?"

"By what—my darling?"

"By—my giving myself—to you?"

"I mean that I want you always," he said in a happy, excited voice that thrilled her. But she looked up at him, still unenlightened.

"I don't quite understand," she said—"but—" and her voice fell so low he could scarcely hear it—"I am—not afraid—to love you."

"Afraid!" He stood silent a moment, then: "What did you think I meant, Valerie? I want you to marry me!"

She flushed and laid her cheek against his shoulder, striving to think amid the excited disorder of her mind, the delicious bewilderment of her senses—strove to keep clear one paramount thought from the heavenly confusion that was invading her, carrying her away, sweeping her into paradise—struggled to keep that thought intact, uninfluenced, and cling to it through everything that threatened to overwhelm her.

Her slim hands resting in his, her flushed face on his breast, his words ringing in her ears, she strove hard, hard! to steady herself. Because already she knew what her decision must be—what her love for him had always meant in the days when that love had been as innocent as friendship. And even now there was little in it except innocence; little yet of passion. It was still only a confused, heavenly surprise, unvexed, and, alas! unterrified. The involuntary glimpse of any future for it or for her left her gaze dreamy, curious, but unalarmed. The future he had offered her she would never accept; no other future frightened her.

"Louis?"

"Dearest," he whispered, his lips to hers.

"It is sweet of you, it is perfectly dear of you to wish me to be your—wife. But—let us decide such questions later—"

"Valerie! What do you mean?"

"I didn't mean that I don't love you," she said, tremulously. "I believe you scarcely understand how truly I do love you… . As a matter of fact, I have always been in love with you without knowing it. You are not the only fool," she said, with a confused little laugh.

"You darling!"

She smiled again uncertainly and shook her head:

"I truly believe I have always been in love with you… . Now that I look back and consider, I am sure of it." She lifted her pretty head and gazed at him, then with a gay little laugh of sheer happiness almost defiant: "You see I am not afraid to love you," she said.

"Afraid? Why should you be?" he repeated, watching her expression.

"Because—I am not going to marry you," she announced, gaily.

He stared at her, stunned.

"Listen, you funny boy," she added, framing his face with her hands and smiling confidently into his troubled eyes: "I am not afraid to love you because I never was afraid to face the inevitable. And the inevitable confronts me now. And I know it. But I will not marry you, Louis. It is good of you, dear of you to ask it. But it is too utterly unwise. And I will not."

"Why?"

"Because," she said, frankly, "I love you better than I do myself." She forced another laugh, adding: "Unlike the gods, whom I love I do not destroy."

"That is a queer answer, dear—"

"Is it? Because I say I love you better than I do myself? Why, Louis, all the history of my friendship for you has been only that. Have you ever seen anything selfish in my affection for you?".

"Of course not, but—"

"Well, then! There isn't one atom of it in my love for you, either. And I love you dearly—dearly! But I'm not selfish enough to marry you. Don't scowl and try to persuade me, Louis, I've a perfectly healthy mind of my own, and you know it—and it's absolutely clear on that subject. You must be satisfied with what I offer—every bit of love that is in me—" She hesitated, level eyed and self-possessed, considering him with the calm gaze of a young goddess:

"Dear," she went on, slowly, "let us end this marriage question once and for all. You can't take me out of my world into yours without suffering for it. Because your world is full of women of your own kind—mothers, sisters, relatives, friends… . And all your loyalty, all your tact, all their tact and philosophy, too, could not ease one moment in life for you if I were unwise enough to go with you into that world and let you try to force them to accept me."

"I tell you," he began, excitedly, "that they must accept—"

"Hush!" she smiled, placing her hand gently across his lips; "with all your man's experience you are only a man; but I know how it is with women. I have no illusions, Louis. Even by your side, and with the well-meant kindness of your family to me, you would suffer; and I have not the courage to let you—even for love's sake."

"You are entirely mistaken—" he broke out; but she silenced him with a pretty gesture, intimate, appealing, a little proud.

"No, I am not mistaken, nor am I likely to deceive myself that any woman of your world could ever consider me of it—or could ever forgive you for taking me there. And that means spoiling life for you. And I will not!"

"Then they can eliminate me, also!" he said, impatiently.

"What logic! When I have tried so hard to make you understand that I will not accept any sacrifice from you!"

"It is no sacrifice for me to give up such a—"

"You say very foolish and very sweet things to me, Louis, but I could not love you enough to make up to you your unhappiness at seeing me in your world and not a part of it. Ah, the living ghosts of that world, Louis! Yet I could endure it for myself—a woman can endure anything when she loves; and find happiness, too—if only the man she loves is happy. But, for a man, the woman is never entirely sufficient. My position in your world would anger you, humiliate you, finally embitter you. And I could not live if sorrow came to you through me."

"You are bringing sorrow on me with every word—"

"No, dear. It hurts for a moment. Then wisdom will heal it. You do not believe what I say. But you must believe this, that through me you shall never know real unhappiness if I can prevent it."

"And I say to you, Valerie, that I want you for my wife. And if my family and my friends hesitate to receive you, it means severing my relations with them until they come to their senses—"

"That is exactly what I will not do to your life, Louis! Can't you understand? Is your mother less dear to you than was mine to me? I will not break your heart! I will not humiliate either you or her; I will not ask her to endure—or any of your family—or one man or woman in that world where you belong… . I am too proud—and too merciful to you!"

"I am my own master!" he broke out, angrily—

"I am my own mistress—and incidentally yours," she added in a low voice.

"Valerie!"

"Am I not?" she asked, quietly.

"How can you say such a thing, child!"

"Because it is true—or will be. Won't it?" She lifted her clear eyes to his, unshrinking—deep brown wells of truth untroubled by the shallows of sham and pretence.

His face burned a deep red; she confronted him, slender, calm eyed, composed: "I am not the kind of woman who loves twice. I love you so dearly that I will not marry you. That is settled. I love you so deeply that I can be happy with you unmarried. And if this is true, is it not better for me to tell you? I ask nothing except love; I give all I have—myself."

She dropped her arms, palms outward, gazing serenely at him; then blushed vividly as he caught her to him in a close embrace, her delicate, full lips crushed to his.

"Dearest—dearest," he whispered, "you will change your ideas when you understand me better—"

"I can love you no more than I do. Could I love you more if I were your wife?"

"Yes, you wilful, silly child!"

She laughed, her lips still touching his. "I don't believe it, Louis. I know I couldn't. Besides, there is no use thinking about it."

"Valerie, your logic and your ethics are terribly twisted—"

"Perhaps. All I know is that I love you. I'd rather talk of that—"

"Than talk of marrying me!"

"Yes, dear."

"But you'd make me so happy, so proud—"

"You darling! to say so. Think so always, Louis, because I promise to make you happy, anyway—"

He had encircled her waist with one arm, and they were slowly pacing the floor before the hearth, she with her charming young head bent, eyes downcast, measuring her steps to his.

She said, thoughtfully: "I have my own ideas concerning life. One of them is to go through it without giving pain to others. To me, the only real wickedness is the wilful infliction of unhappiness. That covers all guilt… . Other matters seem so trivial in comparison—I mean the forms and observances—the formalism of sect and creed… . To me they mean nothing—these petty laws designed to govern those who are willing to endure them. So I ignore them," she concluded, smilingly; and touched her lips to his hand.

"Do you include the marriage law?" he asked, curiously.

"In our case, yes… . I don't think it would do for everybody to ignore it."

"You think we may, safely?"

"Don't you, Louis?" she asked, flushing. "It leaves you free in your own world."

"How would it leave you?"

She looked up, smiling adorably at his thought of her:

"Free as I am now, dearest of men—free to be with you when you wish for me, free to relieve you of myself when you need that relief, free to come and go and earn my living as independently as you gain yours. It would leave me absolutely tranquil in body and mind… ." She laid her flushed face against his. "Only my heart would remain fettered. And that is now inevitable."

He kissed her and drew her closer:

"You are so very, very wrong, dear. The girl who gives herself without benefit of clergy walks the earth with her lover in heavier chains than ever were forged at any earthly altar."

She bent her head thoughtfully; they paced the floor for a while in silence.

Presently she looked up: "You once said that love comes unasked and goes unbidden. Do vows at an altar help matters? Is divorce more decent because lawful? Is love more decent when it has been officially and clerically catalogued?"

"It is safer."

"For whom?"

"For the community."

"Perhaps." She considered as she timed her slow pace to his:

"But, Louis, I can't marry you and I love you! What am I to do? Live out life without you? Let you live out life without me? When my loving you would not harm you or me? When I love you dearly—more dearly, more deeply every minute? When life itself is—is beginning to be nothing in this world except you? What are we to do?"

And, as he made no answer:

"Dear," she said, hesitating a little, "I am perfectly unconscious of any guilt in loving you. I am glad I love you. I wish to be part of you before I die. I wish it more than anything in the world! How can an unselfish girl who loves you harm you or herself or the world if she gives herself to you—without asking benefit of clergy and the bureau of licenses?"

Standing before the fire, her head resting against his shoulder, they watched the fading embers for a while in silence. Then, irresistibly drawn by the same impulse, they turned toward one another, trembling:

"I'll marry you that way—if it's the only way," he said.

"It is the—only way."

She laid a soft hand in his; he bent and kissed it, then touched her mouth with his lips.

"Do you give yourself to me, Valerie?"

"Yes."

"From this moment?" he whispered.

Her face paled. She stood resting her cheek on his shoulder, eyes distrait thinking. Then, in a voice so low and tremulous he scarce could understand:

"Yes, now," she said, "I—give—myself."

He drew her closer: she relaxed in his embrace; her face, white as a flower, upturned to his, her dark eyes looking blindly into his.

There was no sound save the feathery rush of snow against the panes—the fall of an ember amid whitening ashes—a sigh—silence.

Twice logs fell from the andirons, showering the chimney with sparks; presently a little flame broke out amid the débris, lighting up the studio with a fitful radiance; and the single shadow cast by them wavered high on wall and ceiling.

His arms were around her; his lips rested on her face where it lay against his shoulder. The ruddy resurgence of firelight stole under the lashes on her cheeks, and her eyes slowly unclosed.

Standing there gathered close in his embrace, she turned her head and watched the flame growing brighter among the cinders. Thought, which had ceased when her lips met his in the first quick throb of passion, stirred vaguely, and awoke. And, far within her, somewhere in confused obscurity, her half-stunned senses began groping again toward reason.

"Louis!"

"Dearest one!"

"I ought to go. Will you take me home? It is morning—do you realise it?"

She lifted her head, cleared her eyes with one slender wrist, pushing back the disordered hair. Then gently disengaging herself from his arms, and still busy with her tumbled hair, she looked up at the dial of the ancient clock which glimmered red in the firelight.

"Morning—and a strange new year," she said aloud, to herself. She moved nearer to the clock, watching the stiff, jerking revolution of the second hand around its lesser dial.

Hearing him come forward behind her, she dropped her head back against him without turning.

"Do you see what Time is doing to us?—Time, the incurable, killing us by seconds, Louis—eating steadily into the New Year, devouring it hour by hour—the hours that we thought belonged to us." She added, musingly: "I wonder how many hours of the future remain for us."

He answered in a low voice:

"That is for you to decide."

"I know it," she murmured. She lifted one ringless hand and still without looking at him, pressed the third finger backward against his lips.

"So much for the betrothal," she said. "My ring-finger is consecrated."

"Will you not wear any ring?" he asked.

"No. Your kiss is enough."

"Yet—if we are—are—"

"Engaged?" she suggested, calmly. "Yes, call it that. I really am engaged to give myself to you—ex cathedra—extra muros."

"When?" he said under his breath.

"I don't know… . I must think. A girl who is going to break all conventions ought to have time to consider the consequences—" She smiled, faintly—"a little time to prepare herself for the—the great change… . I think we ought to remain engaged for a while—don't you?"

"Dearest!" he broke out, pleadingly, "the old way is the best way! I cannot bear to take you—to have you promise yourself without formality or sanction—"

"But I have already consented, Louis. Volenti non fit injuria," she added with a faint smile. "Voluntas non potest cogi—dearest—dearest of lovers! I love you dearly for what you offer me—I adore you for it. And—how long do you think you ought to wait for me?"

She disengaged herself from his arm, walked slowly toward the tall old clock, turned her back to it and faced him with clear level eyes. After a moment she laughed lightly:

"Did ever an engaged gentleman face the prospect of impending happiness with such a long face as this suitor of mine is wearing!"

His voice broke in the protest wrung from his lips.

"You must be my wife. I tell you! For God's sake marry me and let the future take care of itself!"

"You say so many sweet, confusing, and foolish things to me, Louis, that while you are saying them I almost believe them. And then that clear, pitiless reasoning power of mine awakens me; and I turn my gaze inward and read written on my heart that irrevocable law of mine, that no unhappiness shall ever come to you through me."

Her face, sweetly serious, brightened slowly to a smile.

"Now I am going home, monsieur—home to think over my mad and incredible promise to you … and I'm wondering whether I'll wake up scared to death… . Daylight is a chilly shower-bath. No doubt at all that I'll be pretty well frightened over what I've said and done to-night… . Louis, dear, you simply must take me home this very minute!" She came up to him, placed both hands on his shoulders, kissed him lightly, looked at him for a moment, humorously grave:

"Some day," she said, "a big comet will hit this law-ridden, man-regulated earth—or the earth will slip a cog and go wabbling out of its orbit into interstellar space and side-wipe another planet—or it will ultimately freeze up like the moon. And who will care then how Valerie West loved Louis Neville?—or what letters in a forgotten language spelled 'wife' and what letters spelled 'mistress'? After all, I am not afraid of words. Nor do I fear what is in my heart. God reads it as I stand here; and he can see no selfishness in it. So if merely loving you all my life—and proving it—is an evil thing to do, I shall be punished; but I'm going to do it and find out what celestial justice really thinks about it."

Chapter 8

 

Valerie was busy—exceedingly busy arranging matters, in view of the great change impending.

She began by balancing her check book, comparing stubs with cancelled checks, adding and verifying sums total, filing away paid bills and paying the remainder—a financial operation which did not require much time, but to which she applied herself with all the seriousness of a wealthy man hunting through a check book which will not balance, for a few pennies that ought to be his.

For since she had any accounts at all to keep, she had kept them with method and determination. Her genius for order was inherent: even when she possessed nothing except the clothes she wore, she had always kept them in perfect condition. And now that her popularity in business gave her a bank balance and permitted some of the intimate little luxuries that make for a woman's self-respect, a perfect passion for order and method possessed her.

The tiny bedroom which she inhabited, and the adjoining bathroom, were always immaculate. Every week she made an inventory of her few but pretty garments, added or subtracted from her memorandum, went over her laundry list, noted and laid aside whatever clothing needed repairs.

Once a week, too, she inspected her hats, foot-wear, furs; dusted the three rows of books, emptied and cleaned the globe in which a solitary goldfish swam, goggling his eyes in the sunshine, and scrubbed the porcelain perching pole on which her parrot sat all day in the bathroom window making limited observations in French, Spanish, and English, and splitting red peppers and dried watermelon seeds with his heavy curved beak. He was a gorgeous bird, with crimson and turquoise blue on him, and a capacity for deviltry restrained only by a silver anklet and chain, gifts from Querida, as was also the parrot.

So Valerie, in view of the great change impending, began to put her earthly house in order—without any particular reason, however, because the great change would not affect her quarters or her living in them. Nor could she afford to permit it to interfere with her business career for which perfect independence was necessary.

She had had it out with Neville one stormy afternoon in January, stopping in for tea after posing for John Burleson's Psyche fountain ordered by Penrhyn Cardemon. She had demanded from Neville acquiescence in her perfect freedom of action, absolute independence; had modestly requested non-interference in her business affairs and the liberty to support herself.

"There is no other way, Louis," she explained very sweetly. "I do not think I am going to lose any self-respect in giving myself to you—but there would not be one shred of it left to cover me if I were not as free as you are to make the world pay me fairly for what I give it."

And, another time, she had said to him: "It is better not to tell me all about your personal, private, and financial affairs—better that I do not tell you about mine. Is it necessary to burst into financial and trivial confidences when one is in love?

"I have an idea that that is what spoils most marriages. To me there is a certain respectability in reticence when a girl is very much in love. I would no more open my personal and private archives in all their petty disorder to your inspection than I would let you see me dress—even if we had been married for hundreds of years."

And still, on another occasion, when he had fought her for hours in an obstinate determination to make her say she would marry him—and when, beaten, chagrined, baffled, he had lost his temper, she won him back with her child-like candour and self-control.

"Your logic," he said, "is unbaked, unmature, unfledged. It's squab-logic, I tell you, Valerie; and it is not very easy for me to listen to it."

"I'm afraid that I am not destined to be entirely easy for you, dear, even with love as the only tie with which to bind you. The arbitrary laws of a false civilisation are going to impose on you what you think are duties and obligations to me and to yourself—until I explain them away. You must come to me in your perplexity, Louis, and give me a chance to remind you of the basic and proven proposition that a girl is born into this world as free as any man, and as responsible to herself and to others; and that her title to her own individuality and independence—her liberty of mind, her freedom to give and accept, her capability of taking care of herself, her divine right of considering, re-considering, of meeting the world unafraid—is what really ought to make her lovable."

He had answered: "What rotten books have you been reading?" And it annoyed her, particularly when he had asked her whether she expected to overturn, with the squab-logic of twenty years, the formalisms of a civilisation several thousand years old. He had added:

"The runways of wild animals became Indian paths; the Indian paths became settlers' roads, and the roads, in time, city streets. But it was the instinct of wild creatures that surveyed and laid out the present highways of our reasoning civilisation. And I tell you, Valerie, that the old ways are the best, for on them is founded every straight highway of modern thought and custom."

She considered:

"Then there is only one way left—to see you no more."

He had thought so, too, infuriated at the idea; and they had passed a very miserable and very stormy afternoon together, which resulted in her crying silently on the way home; and in a sleepless night for two; and in prolonged telephone conversation at daybreak. But it all ended with a ring at his door-bell, a girl in furs all flecked with snow, springing swiftly into his studio; a moment's hesitation—then the girl and her furs in his arms, her cold pink cheeks against his face—a brief moment of utter happiness—for she was on her way to business—a swift, silent caress, then eyes searching eyes in silent promise—in reluctant farewell for an hour or two.

But it left him to face the problems of the day with a new sense of helplessness—the first confused sensation that hers was the stronger nature, the dominant personality—although he did not definitely understand this.

Because, how could he understand it of a young girl so soft, so yielding, so sweet, so shy and silent in the imminence of passion when her consenting lips trembled and grew fragrant in half-awakened response to his.

How could he believe it—conscious of what he had made of himself through sheer will and persistent? How could he credit it—remembering what he already stood for in the world, where he stood, how he had arrived by the rigid road of self-denial; how he had mounted, steadily, undismayed, unperturbed, undeterred by the clamour of envy, of hostility, unseduced by the honey of flattery?

Upright, calm, self-confident, he had forged on straight ahead, following nobody—battled steadily along the upward path until—out of the void, suddenly he had come up against a blank wall.

That wall which had halted, perplexed, troubled, dismayed, terrified him because he was beginning to believe it to be the boundary which marked his own limitations, suddenly had become a transparent barrier through which he could see. And what he saw on the other side was an endless vista leading into infinity. But the path was guarded; Love stood sentinel there. And that was what he saw ahead of him now, and he knew that he might pass on if Love willed it—and that he would never care to pass on alone. But that he could not go forward, ignoring Love, neither occurred to him nor would he have believed it if it had. Yet, at times, an indefinable unease possessed him as though some occult struggle was impending for which he was unprepared.

That struggle had already begun, but he did not know it.

On the contrary all his latent strength and brilliancy had revived, exquisitely virile; and the new canvas on which he began now to work blossomed swiftly into magnificent florescence.

A superb riot of colour bewitched the entire composition; never had his brushes swept with such sun-tipped fluency, never had the fresh splendour of his hues and tones approached so closely to convincing himself in the hours of fatigue and coldly sober reaction from the auto-intoxication of his own facility.

That auto-intoxication had always left his mind and his eye steady and watchful, although drugged—like the calm judgment of the intoxicated opportunist at the steering wheel of a racing motor. And a race once run and ended, a deliberate consideration of results usually justified the pleasure of the pace.

Yet that mysterious something which some said he lacked, had not yet appeared. That something, according to many, was an elusive quality born of a sympathy for human suffering—an indefinable and delicate bond between the artist and his world—between a master who has suffered, and all humanity who understands.

The world seemed to recognise this subtle bond between themselves and Querida's pictures. Yet in the pictures there was never any sadness. Had Querida ever suffered? Was it in that olive-skinned, soft-voiced young man to suffer?—a man apparently all grace and unruffled surface and gentle charm—a man whose placid brow remained smooth and untroubled by any line of perplexity or of sorrow.

And as Neville studied his own canvas coolly, logically, with an impersonal scrutiny that almost amounted to hostility, he wondered what it was in Querida's work that still remained absent in his. He felt its absence but he could not define what it was that was absent, could not discover the nature of it. He really began to feel the lack of it in his work, but he searched his canvas and his own heart in vain for any vacuum unfilled.

Then, too, had he himself not suffered? What had that restless, miserable winter meant, if it had not meant sorrow? He had suffered—blindly it is true until the truth of his love for Valerie had suddenly confronted him. Yet that restless pain—and the intense emotion of their awakening—all the doubts, all the anxieties—the wonder and happiness and sadness in the imminence of that strange future impending for them both—had altered nothing in his work—brought into it no new quality—unless, as he thought, it had intensified to a dazzling brilliancy the same qualities which already had made his work famous.

"It's all talk," he said to himself—"it's sentimental jargon, precious twaddle—all this mysterious babble about occult quality and humanity and sympathy. If José Querida has the capacity of a chipmunk for mental agony, I've lost my bet that he hasn't."

And all the time he was conscious that there was something about Querida's work which made that work great; and that it was not in his own work, and that his own work was not great, and never had been great.

"But it will be," he said rather grimly to himself one day, turning with a shrug from his amazing canvas and pulling the unfinished portrait of Valerie into the cold north light.

For a long while he stood before it, searching in it for any hint of that elusive and mysterious something, and found none.

Moreover there was in the painting of this picture a certain candour amounting to stupidity—an uncertainty—a naïve, groping sort of brush work. It seemed to be technically, almost deliberately, muddled.

There was a tentative timidity about it that surprised his own technical assurance—almost moved him to contempt.

What had he been trying to do? For what had he been searching in those slow, laborious, almost painful brush strokes—in that clumsy groping for values, in the painstaking reticence, the joyless and mathematical establishment of a sombre and uninspiring key, in the patient plotting of simpler planes where space and quiet reigned unaccented?

"Lord!" he said, biting his lip. "I've been stung by the microbe of the precious! I'll be talking Art next with both thumbs and a Vandyke beard."

Still, through his self-disgust, a sensation of respect for the canvas at which he was scowling, persisted. Nor could he account for the perfectly unwelcome and involuntary idea that there was, about the half-finished portrait, something almost dignified in the very candour of its painting.

John Burleson came striding in while he was still examining it. He usually came about tea time, and the door was left open after five o'clock.

"O-ho!" he said in his big, unhumorous voice, "what in hell and the name of Jimmy Whistler have we here?"

"Mud," said Neville, shortly—"like Mr. Whistler's."

"He was muddy—sometimes," said John, seriously, "but you never were until this."

"Oh, I know it, Johnny. Something infected me. I merely tried to do what isn't in me. And this is the result. When a man decides he has a mission, you can never tell what fool thing he'll be guilty of."

"It's Valerie West, isn't it?" demanded John, bluntly.

"She won't admire you for finding any resemblance," said Neville, laughing.

The big sculptor rubbed his big nose reflectively.

"After all," he said, "what is so bad about it, Kelly?"

"Oh, everything."

"No, it isn't. There's something about it that's—different—and interesting—"

"Oh, shut up, John, and fix yourself a drink—"

"Kelly, I'm telling you that it isn't bad—that there's something terribly solid and sincere about this beginning—"

He looked around with a bovine grunt as Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan came mincing in: "I say, you would-be funny fellows!—come over and tell Kelly Neville that he's got a pretty good thing here if he only has the brains to develop it!"

Neville lighted a cigarette and looked on cynically as Ogilvy and Annan joined Burleson on tiptoe, affecting exaggerated curiosity.

"I think it's rotten," said Annan, after a moment's scrutiny; "don't you, Sam?"

Ogilvy, fists thrust deep into the pockets of his painting jacket, eyed the canvas in silence.

"Don't you?" repeated Annan. "Or is it a masterpiece beyond my vulgar ken?"

"Well—no. Kelly was evidently trying to get at something new—work out some serious idea. No, I don't think it's rotten at all. I rather like it."

"It looks too much like her; that's why it's rotten," said Annan. "Thank God I've a gift for making pretty women out of my feminine clients, otherwise I'd starve. Kelly, you haven't made Valerie pretty enough. That's the trouble. Besides, it's muddy in spots. Her gown needs dry-cleaning. But my chief criticism is the terrible resemblance to the original."

"Ah-h, what are you talking about!" growled Burleson; "did you ever see a prettier girl than Valerie West?"

Ogilvy said slowly: "She's pretty—to look at in real life. But, somehow, Kelly has managed here to paint her more exactly than we have really ever noticed her. That's Valerie's face and figure all right; and it's more—it reflects what is going on inside her head—all the unbaked, unassimilated ideas of immaturity whirring in a sequence which resembles logic to the young, but isn't."

"What do you mean by such bally stuff?" demanded Burleson, bluntly.

Annan laughed, but Ogilvy said seriously:

"I mean that Kelly has painted something interesting. It's a fascinating head—all soft hair and delicious curves, and the charming indecision of immature contours which ought some day to fall into a nobler firmness… . It's as interesting as a satire, I tell you. Look at that perfectly good mouth and its delicate sensitive decision with a hint of puritanical primness in the upper lip—and the full, sensuous under lip mocking the upper and giving the lie to the child's eyes which are still wide with the wonder of men and things. And there's something of an adolescent's mystery in the eyes, too—a hint of languor where the bloom of the cheek touches the lower lid—and those smooth, cool, little hands, scarcely seen in the shadow—did you ever see more purity and innocence—more character and the lack of it—painted into a pair of hands since Van Dyck and Whistler died?"

Neville, astonished, stood looking incredulously at the canvas around which the others had gathered.

Burleson said: "There's something honest and solid about it, anyway; hanged if there isn't."

"Like a hen," suggested Ogilvy, absently.

"Like a hen?" repeated Burleson. "What in hell has a hen got to do with the subject?"

"Like you, then, John," said Annan, "honest, solid, but totally unacquainted with the finer phases of contemporary humour—"

"I'm as humorous as anybody!" roared Burleson.

"Sure you are, John—just as humorously contemporaneous as anybody of our anachronistic era," said Ogilvy, soothingly. "You're right; there's nothing funny about a hen."

"And here's a highball for you, John," said Neville, concocting a huge one on the sideboard.

"And here are two charming ladies for you, John," added Sam, as Valerie and Rita Tevis entered the open door and mockingly curtsied to the company.

"We've dissected your character," observed Annan to Valerie, pointing to her portrait. "We know all about you now; Sam was the professor who lectured on you, but you can blame Kelly for turning on the searchlight."

"What search-light?" she asked, pivotting from Neville's greeting, letting her gloved hand linger in his for just a second longer than convention required.

"Harry means that portrait of you I started last year," said Neville, vexed. "He pretends to find it full of psychological subtleties."

"Do you?" inquired Valerie. "Have you discovered anything horrid in my character?"

"I haven't finished looking for the character yet," said Sam with an impudent grin. "When I find it I'll investigate it."

"Sam! Come here!"

He came carefully, wincing when she took him by the generous lobes of both ears.

"Now what did you say?"

"Help!" he murmured, contritely; "will no kind wayfarer aid me?"

"Answer me!"

"I only said you were beautifully decorative but intellectually impulsive—"

"No, answer me, Sam!"

"Ouch! I said you had a pair of baby eyes and an obstinate mouth and an immature mind that came to, conclusions before facts were properly assimilated. In other words I intimated that you were afflicted with incurable femininity and extreme youth," he added with satisfaction, "and if you tweak my ears again I'll kiss you!"

She let him go with a last disdainful tweak, gracefully escaping his charge and taking refuge behind Neville who was mixing another highball for Annan.

"This is a dignified episode," observed Neville, threatening Ogilvy with the siphon.

"Help me make tea, Sam," coaxed Valerie. "Bring out the table; that's an exceedingly nice boy. Rita, you'll have tea, too, won't you, dear?"

Unconsciously she had come to assume the role of hostess in Neville's studio, even among those who had been familiar there long before Neville ever heard of her.

Perfectly unaware herself of her instinctive attitude, other people noticed it. For the world is sharp-eyed, and its attitude is always alert, ears pricked forward even when its tail wags good-naturedly.

Ogilvy watched her curiously as she took her seat at the tea table. Then he glanced at Neville; but could not make up his mind.

It would be funny if there was anything between Valerie and Neville—anything more than there ever had been between the girl and dozens of her men friends. For Ogilvy never allowed himself to make any mistake concerning the informality and freedom of Valerie West in her intimacies with men of his kind. She was a born flirt, a coquette, daring, even indiscreet; but that ended it; and he knew it; and so did every man with whom she came in contact.

Yet—and he looked again at her and then at Neville—there seemed to him to be, lately, something a little different in the attitudes of these two toward each other—nothing that he could name—but it preoccupied him sometimes.

There was a little good-natured malice in Ogilvy; some masculine curiosity, too. Looking from Valerie to Neville, he said very innocently:

"Kelly, you know that peachy dream with whom you cut up so shamefully on New-year's night? Well, she asked me for your telephone number—"

"What are you talking about?" demanded Neville, annoyed.

"Why, I'm talking about Mazie," said Sam, pleasantly. "You remember Mazie Gray? And how crazy you and she became about each other?"

Valerie, who was pouring tea, remained amiably unconcerned; and Ogilvy obtained no satisfaction from her; but Neville's scowl was so hearty and unfeigned that a glimpse of his visage sent Annan into fits of laughter. To relieve which he ran across the floor, like a huge spider. Then Valerie leisurely lifted her tranquil eyes and her eyebrows, too, a trifle.

"Why such unseemly contortions, Harry?" she inquired.

"Sam tormenting Kelly to stir you up! He's got a theory that you and Kelly are mutually infatuated."

"What a delightful theory, Sam," said Valerie, smiling so sincerely at Ogilvy that he made up his mind there wasn't anything in it. But the next moment, catching sight of Neville's furious face, his opinion wavered.

Valerie said laughingly to Rita: "They'll never grow up, these two—" nodding her head toward Ogilvy and Annan. And to Neville carelessly—too carelessly: "Will you have a little more tea, Kelly dear?"

Her attitude was amiable and composed; her voice clear and unembarrassed. There may have been a trifle more colour in her cheeks; but what preoccupied Rita was in her eyes—a fleeting glimpse of something that suddenly concentrated all of Rita's attention upon the girl across the table.

For a full minute she sat looking at Valerie who seemed pleasantly unconscious of her inspection; then almost stealthily she shifted her gaze to Neville.

Gladys and her kitten came purring around in quest of cream; Rita gathered them into her arms and caressed them and fed them bits of cassava and crumbs of cake. She was unusually silent that afternoon. John Burleson tried to interest her with heavy information of various kinds, but she only smiled absently at that worthy man. Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan attempted to goad her into one of those lively exchanges of banter in which Rita was entirely capable of taking care of herself. But her smile was spiritless and non-combative; and finally they let her alone and concentrated their torment upon Valerie, who endured it with equanimity and dangerously sparkling eyes, and an occasional lightening retort which kept those young men busy, especially when the epigram was in Latin—which hurt their feelings.

She had just furnished them with a sample of this classical food for thought when the door-bell rang and Neville looked up in astonishment to see José Querida come in.

"Hello," he said, springing up with friendly hand outstretched—"this is exceedingly good of you, Querida. You have not been here in a very long while."

Querida's smile showed his teeth; he bowed to Valerie and to Rita, bowed to the men in turn, and smiled on Neville.

"In excuse I must plead work, my dear fellow—a poor plea and poorer excuse for the pleasure lost in seeing you—" he nodded to the others—"and in missing many agreeable little gatherings—similar to this, I fancy?"

There was a rising inflection to his voice which made the end of his little speech terminate as a question; and he looked to Valerie for his answer.

"Yes," she said, "we usually have tea in Kelly's studio. And you may have some now, if you wish, José."

He nodded his thanks and placed his chair beside hers.

The conversation had become general; Rita woke up, dumped the cats out of her lap, and made a few viciously verbal passes at Ogilvy. Burleson, earnest and most worthy, engaged Querida's attention for a while; but that intellectually lithe young man evaded the ponderously impending dispute with suave skill, and his gentle smile lingered longer on Valerie than on anybody else. Several times, with an adroit carelessness that seemed to be purposeless, he contrived to draw Valerie out of the general level of conversation by merely lowering his voice; but she seemed to understand the invitation; and, answering him as carelessly as he spoke, keyed her replies in harmony with the chatter going on around them.

He drank his tea smilingly; listened to the others; bore his part modestly; and at intervals his handsome eyes wandered about the studio, reverting frequently to the great canvas overhead.

"You know," he said to Neville, showing the eternal edge of teeth under his crisp black beard—"that composition of yours is simply superb. I am all for it, Neville."

"I'm glad you are," nodded Neville, pleasantly, "but it hasn't yet developed into what I hoped it might." His eyes swerved toward Valerie; their glances encountered casually and passed on. Only Rita saw the girl's breath quicken for an instant—saw the scarcely perceptible quiver of Neville's mouth where the smile twitched at his lip for its liberty to tell the whole world that he was in love. But their faces were placid, their expressions well schooled; Querida's half-veiled eyes appeared to notice nothing and for a while he remained smilingly silent.

Later, by accident, he caught sight of Valerie's portrait; he turned sharply in his chair and looked full at the canvas.

Nobody spoke for a moment; Neville, who was passing Valerie, felt the slightest contact as the velvet of her fingers brushed across his.

Then Querida rose and walked over to the portrait and stood before it in silence, biting at his vivid under lip and at the crisp hairs of his beard that framed it.

Without knowing why, Neville began to feel that Querida was finding in that half-finished work something that disturbed him; and that he was not going to acknowledge what it was that he saw there, whether of good or of the contrary.

Nobody spoke and Querida said nothing.

A mild hope entered Neville's mind that the something, which had never been in any work of his, might perhaps lie latent in that canvas—that Querida was discovering it—without a pleasure—but with a sensitive clairvoyance which was already warning him of a new banner in the distance, a new trumpet-call from the barriers, another lance in the lists where he, Querida, had ridden so long unchallenged and supreme.

Within him he felt a sudden and secret excitement that he never before had known—a conviction that the unexpressed hostility of Querida's silence was the truest tribute ever paid him—the tribute that at last was arousing hope from its apathy, and setting spurs to his courage.

Rita, watching Querida, yawned and concealed the indiscretion with her hand and a taunting word directed at Ogilvy, who retorted in kind. And general conversation began again.

Querida turned toward Neville, caught his eye, and shrugged:

"That portrait is scarcely in your happiest manner, is it?" he asked with a grimace. "For me—" he touched his breast with long pale fingers—"I adore your gayer vein—your colour, clarity—the glamour of splendour that you alone can cast over such works as that—" He waved his hand upward toward the high canvas looming above. And he smiled at Neville and seated himself beside Valerie.

A portfolio of new mezzotints attracted Annan; others gathered around to examine Neville's treasures; the tea table was deserted for a while except by Querida and Valerie. Then he deliberately dropped his voice:

"Will you give me another cup of tea, Valerie? And let me talk to you?"

"With pleasure." She set about preparing it.

"I have not seen you for some time," he said in the same caressing undertone.

"You haven't required me, José."

"Must it be entirely a matter of business between us?"

"Why, of course," she said in cool surprise. "You know perfectly well how busy I am—and must be."

"You are sometimes busy—pouring tea, here."

"But it is after hours."

"Yet, after hours, you no longer drop in to chat with me."

"Why, yes, I do—"

"Pardon. Not since—the new year began… . Will you permit me a word?"

She inclined her head with undisturbed composure; he went on:

"I have asked you to many theatres, invited you to dine with me, to go with me to many, many places. And, it appeared, that you had always other engagements… . Have I offended you?"

"Of course not. You know I like you immensely—"

"Immensely," he repeated with a smile. "Once there was more of sentiment in your response, Valerie. There is little sentiment in immensity."

She flushed: "I was spoons on you," she said, candidly. "I was silly with you—and very indiscreet… . But I'd rather not recall that—"

"I can not choose but recall it!"

"Nice men forget such things," she said, hastily.

"How can you speak that way about it?"

"Because I think that way, José," she said, looking up at him; but she saw no answering smile in his face, and little colour in it; and she remained unquietly conscious of his gaze.

"I will not talk to you if you begin to look at me like that," she began under her breath; "I don't care for it—"

"Can I help it—remembering—"

"You have nothing to remember except my pardon," she interrupted hotly.

"Your pardon—for showing that I cared for you?"

"My pardon for your losing your head."

"We were absolutely frank with one another—"

"I do not understand that you are the sort of man a girl can not be frank with. We imprudently exchanged a few views on life. You—"

"Many," he said—"and particularly views on marriage."

She said, steadily: "I told you that I cared at heart nothing at all for ceremony and form. You said the same. But you misunderstood me. What was there in that silly conversation significant to you or to me other than an impersonal interest in hearing ideas expressed?"

"You knew I was in love with you."

"I did not!" she said, sharply.

"You let me touch your hands—kiss you, once—"

"And you behaved like a madman—and frightened me nearly to death! Had you better recall that night, José? I was generous about it; I was even a little sorry for you. And I forgave you."

"Forgave me my loving you?"

"You don't know what love is," she said, reddening.

"Do you, Valerie?"

She sat flushed and silent, looking fixedly at the cups and saucers before her.

"Do you?" he repeated in a curious voice. And there seemed to be something of terror in it, for she looked up, startled, to meet his long, handsome eyes looking at her out of a colourless visage.

"José," she said, "what in the world possesses you to speak to me this way? Have you any right to assume this attitude—merely because I flirted with you as harmlessly—or meant it harmlessly—"

She glanced involuntarily across the studio where the others had gathered over the new collection of mezzotints, and at her glance Neville raised his head and smiled at her, and encountered Querida's expressionless gaze.

For a moment Querida turned his head away, and Valerie saw that his face was pale and sinister.

"José," she said, "are you insane to take our innocent affair so seriously? What in the world has come over you? We have been such excellent friends. You have been just as nice as you could be, so gay and inconsequential, so witty, so jolly, such good company!—and now, suddenly, out of a perfectly clear sky your wrath strikes me like lightning!"

"My anger is like that."

"José!" she exclaimed, incredulously.

He showed the edge of perfect teeth again, but she was not sure that he was smiling. Then he laughed gently.

"Oh," she said in relief—"you really startled me."

"I won't do it again, Valerie." She looked at him, still uncertain, fascinated by her uncertainty.

The colour—as much as he ever had—returned to his face; he reached over for a cigarette, lighted it, smiled at her charmingly.

"I was just lonely without you," he said. "Like an unreasonable child I brooded over it and—" he shrugged, "it suddenly went to my head. Will you forgive my bad temper?"

"Yes—I will. Only I never knew you had a temper. It—astonishes me."

He said nothing, smilingly.

"Of course," she went on, still flushed, "I knew you were impulsive—hot-headed—but I know you like me—"

"I was crazily in love with you," he said, lightly; "and when you let me touch you—"

"Oh, I won't ever again, José!" she exclaimed, half-fearfully; "I supposed you understood that sentiment could be a perfectly meaningless and harmless thing—merely a silly moment—a foolish interlude in a sober friendship… . And I liked you, José—"

"Can you still like me?"

"Y-yes. Why, of course—if you'll let me."

"Shall we be the same excellent friends, Valerie? And all this ill temper of mine will be forgotten?"

"I'll try… . Yes, why not? I do like you, and I admire you tremendously."

His eyes rested on her a moment; he inhaled a deep breath from his cigarette, expelled it, nodded.

"I'll try to win back all your friendship for me," he said, pleasantly.

"That will be easy. I want you to like me. I want to be able to like you… . I shall have need of friends," she said half to herself, and looked across at Neville with a face tranquil, almost expressionless save for the sensitive beauty of the mouth.

After a moment Querida, too, lifted his head and gazed deliberately at Neville. Then very quietly:

"Are you dining alone this evening?"

"No."

"Oh. Perhaps to-morrow evening, then—"

"I'm afraid not, José."

He smiled: "Not dining alone ever again?"

"Not—for the present."

"I see."

"There is nothing to see," she said calmly. But his smile seemed now so genuine that it disarmed her; and she blushed when he said:

"Am I to wish you happiness, Valerie? Is that the trouble?"

"Certainly. Please wish it for me always—as I do for you—and for everybody."

But he continued to laugh, and the colour in her face persisted, annoying her intensely.

"Nevertheless," he said, "I do not believe you can be hopelessly in love."

"What ever put such an idea into that cynical head of yours?"

"Chance," he said. "But you are not irrevocably in love. You are ignorant of what love can really mean. Only he who understands it—and who has suffered through it—can ever teach you. And you will never be satisfied until he does."'

"Are you very wise concerning love, José?" she asked, laughing.

"Perhaps. You will desire to be, too, some day. A good school, an accomplished scholar."

"And the schoolmaster? Oh! José!"

They both were laughing now—he with apparent pleasure in her coquetry and animation, she still a little confused and instinctively on her guard.

Rita came strolling over, a tiny cigarette balanced between her slender fingers:

"Stop flirting, José," she said; "it's too near dinner time. Valerie, child, I'm dining with the unspeakable John again. It's a horrid habit. Can't you prescribe for me? José, what are you doing this evening?"

"Penance," he said; "I'm dining with my family."

"Penance," she repeated with a singular look—"well—that's one way of regarding the pleasure of having any family to dine with—isn't it, Valerie?"

"José didn't mean it that way."

Rita blew a ring from her cigarette's glimmering end.

"Will you be at home this evening, Valerie?"

"Y-yes … rather late."

"Too late to see me?"

"No, you dear girl. Come at eleven, anyway. And if I'm a little late you'll forgive me, won't you?"

"No, I won't," said Rita, crossly. "You and I are business women, anyway, and eleven is too late for week days. I'll wait until I can see you, sometime—"

"Was it anything important, dear?"

"Not to me."

Querida rose, took his leave of Valerie and Rita, went over and made his adieux to his host and the others. When he had gone Rita, standing alone with Valerie beside the tea table, said in a low voice:

"Don't do it, Valerie!"

"Do—what?" asked the girl in astonishment.

"Fall in love."

Valerie laughed.

"Do you mean with Querida?"

"No."

"Then—what do you mean?"

"You're on the edge of doing it, child. It isn't wise. It won't do for us… . I know—I know, Valerie, more than you know about—love. Listen to me. Don't! Go away—go somewhere; drop everything and go, if you've any sense left. I'll go with you if you will let me… . I'll do anything for you, dear. Only listen to me before it's too late; keep your self-control; keep your mind clear on this one thing, that love is of no use to us—no good to us. And if you think you suspect its presence in your neighbourhood, get away from it; pick up your skirts and run, Valerie… . You've plenty of time to come back and wonder what you ever could have seen in the man to make you believe you could fall in love with him."

Ogilvy, strolling up, stood looking sentimentally at the two young girls.

"A—perfect—pair—of precious—priceless—peaches," he said; "I'd love to be a Turk with an Oriental smirk and an ornamental dirk, and a tendency to shirk when the others go to work; for the workers I can't bear 'em and I'd rather run a harem—"

"No doubt," said Rita, coldly; "so you need not explain to me the rather lively young lady I met in the corridor looking for studio number ten—"

"Rita! Zuleika! Star of my soul! Jewel of my turban! Do you entertain suspicions—"

"Oh, you probably did the entertaining—"

"I? Heaven! How I am misunderstood! John Burleson! Come over here and tell this very charming young lady all about that somewhat conspicuous vision from a local theatre who came floating into my studio by accident while in joyous quest of you!"

But Annan only laughed, and Rita shrugged her disdain. But as she nodded adieu to Valerie, the latter saw a pinched look in her face, and did not understand it.

Chapter 9

 

The world, and his own family, had always been inclined to love Louis Neville, and had advanced no farther than the inclination. There were exceptions.

Archie Allaire, who hated him, discussing him floridly once with Querida at the Thumb-tack Club in the presence of a dozen others, characterised him as "one of those passively selfish snobs whose virtues are all negative and whose modesty is the mental complacency of an underdone capon."

He was sharply rebuked by Ogilvy, Annan, and Burleson; skilfully by Querida—so adroitly indeed that his amiable and smiling apology for the absent painter produced a curiously depressing effect upon Ogilvy and Annan, and even left John Burleson dully uncomfortable, although Allaire had been apparently well drubbed.

"All the same," said Allaire with a sneer to Querida after the others had departed, "Neville is really a most frightful snob. Like a busy bacillus surrounded by a glass tube full of prepared culture, he exists in his own intellectual exudations perfectly oblivious to the miseries and joys of the world around him. He hasn't time for anybody except himself."

Querida laughed: "What has Neville done to you, my friend?"

"To me?" repeated Allaire with a shrug. "Oh, nothing. It isn't that… . All the same when I had my exhibition at the Monson Galleries I went to him and said, 'See here, Neville, I've got some Shoe-trust and Button-trust women to pour tea for me. Now you know a lot of fashionable people and I want my tea-pourers to see them, and I want the papers to say that they've been to a private view of my exhibition.'

"He gave me one of those absent-treatment stares and said he'd tell all the really interesting people he knew; and the damnedest lot of scrubby, dowdy, down-at-the-heels tatterdemalions presented his card at my private view that you ever saw outside an artist's rathskeller, a lower Fifth Avenue reception, or a varnishing day! By God, I can go to the bread-line and get that sort of lookers myself—and I don't care whether his bunch came from Tenth Street Colonial stock or the Washington Square nobility or the landed gentry of Chelsea or from the purlieus of the Bronx, which is where they apparently belong! I can get that kind myself. I wanted automobiles and broughams and clothes, and I got one sea-going taxi, and the dirty end of the stick! And to cap the climax he strolled in himself with a girl whose face is familiar to everybody who looks at bath tubs in the back of the magazines—Valerie West! And I want to tell you I couldn't look my Shoe-trust tea-pourers in the face; and they're so mad that I haven't got an order out of them since."

Querida laughed till the tears stood in his big, velvety, almond-shaped eyes.

"Why didn't you come to me?" he said.

"Tell you the truth, Querida, I would have if I'd known then that you were painting portraits of half of upper Fifth Avenue. Besides," he added, naïvely, "that was before I began to see you in the grand tier at the opera every week."

"It was before I sat anywhere except in the gallery," said Querida with a humorous shrug. "Until this winter I knew nobody, either. And very often I washed my own handkerchiefs and dried them on the window pane. I had only fame for my laundress and notoriety for my butcher."

"Hey?" said Allaire, a trifle out of countenance.

"It is very true. It cost me so much to paint and frame my pictures that the prices they brought scarcely paid for models and materials." He added, pleasantly: "I have dined more often on a box of crackers and a jar of olives than at a table set with silver and spread with linen." He laughed without affectation or bitterness:

"It has been a long road, Allaire—from a stable-loft studio to—" he shrugged—"the 'Van Rypens' grand tier box, for example."

"How in God's name did you do it?" inquired Allaire, awed to the momentary obliteration of envy.

"I—painted," said Querida, smiling.

"Sure. I know that. I suppose it was the hellish row made over your canvases last winter that did the trick."

Querida's eyes were partly closed as though in retrospection. "Also," he said, softly, "I painted a very fashionable woman—for nothing—and to her entire satisfaction."

"That's the real thing, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid so… . Make two or three unlovely and unlovable old ladies lovely and lovable—on canvas—for nothing. Then society will let you slap its powdered and painted face—yes—permit you—other liberties—if only you will paint it and sign your canvases and ask them a wicked price for what you give them and—for what they yield to you."

Allaire's ruddy face grew ruddier; he grinned and passed a muscular hand over his thick, handsome, fox-tinted hair.

"I wish I could get next," he said with a hard glance at Querida. "I'd sting 'em."

"I would be very glad to introduce you to anybody I know," observed the other.

"Do you mean that?"

"Why not. A man who has waited as I have for opportunity understands what others feel who are still waiting."

"That's damn square of you, Querida."

"Oh, no, not square; just natural. The public table is big enough for everybody."

Allaire thought a moment, slowly caressing his foxy hair.

"After all," he said with a nervous snicker, "you needn't be afraid of anybody. Nobody can paint like you… . But I'd like to get a look in, Querida. I've got to make a little money in one way or another—" he added impudently—"and if I can't paint well enough to sting them, there's always the chance of marrying one of 'em."

Querida laughed: "Any man can always marry any woman. There's no trick in getting any wife you want."

"Sure," grinned Allaire; "a wife is a cinch; it's the front row that keeps good men guessing." He glanced at Querida, his gray-green eyes brimming with an imprudent malice he could not even now deny himself—"Also the backs of the magazines keep one guessing," he added, carelessly; "and I've the patience of a tom-cat, myself."

Querida's beautifully pencilled eyebrows were raised interrogatively.

"Oh, I'll admit that the little West girl kept me sitting on back fences until some other fellow threw a bottle at me," said Allaire with a disagreeable laugh. He had come as near as he dared to taunting Querida and, afraid at the last moment, had turned the edge of it on himself.

Querida lighted a cigarette and blew a whiff of smoke toward the ceiling.

"I've an idea," he said, lazily, "that somebody is trying to marry her."

"Forget it," observed Allaire in contempt. "She wouldn't stand for the sort who marry her kind. She'll land hard on her neck one of these days, and the one best bet will be some long-faced Botticelli with heavenly principles and the moral stability of a tumbler pigeon. Then there'll be hell to pay; but he will get over it and she'll get aboard the toboggan. That's the way it ends, Querida."

Querida sipped his coffee and glanced out of the club window. From the window he could see the roof of the studio building where Neville lived. And he wondered how far Valerie was from that building at the present moment, wondered, and sipped his coffee.

He was a man whose career had been builded upon perseverance. He had begun life by slaying every doubt. And his had been a bitter life; but he had suffered smilingly; the sordid struggle along the edges of starvation had hardened nothing of his heart.

Sensitive, sympathetic, ardent, proud, and ambitious with the quiet certainty of a man predestined, he had a woman's capacity for patience, for suffering, and for concealment, but not for mercy. And he cared passionately for love as he did for beauty—had succumbed to both in spirit oftener than in the caprice of some inconsequential amourette.

But never, until he came to know Valerie West, had a living woman meant anything vital to his happiness. Yet, what she aroused in him was that part of his nature to which he himself was a stranger—a restless, sensuous side which her very isolation and exposure to danger seemed to excite the more until desire to control her, to drive others away, to subdue, master, mould her, make her his own, obsessed him. And he had tried it and failed; and had drawn aside, fiercely, still watching and determined.

Some day he meant to marry properly. He had never doubted his ability to do so even in the sordid days. But there was no hurry, and life was young, and so was Valerie West—young enough, beautiful enough to bridge the years with him until his ultimate destiny awaited him.

And all was going well again with him until that New-year's night; and matters had gone ill with him since then—so ill that he could not put the thought of it from him, and her beauty haunted him—and the expression of Neville's eyes!—

But he remained silent, quiet, alert, watching and waiting with all his capacity for enduring. And he had now something else to watch—something that his sensitive intuition had divined in a single unfinished canvas of Neville's.

So far there had been but one man supreme in the new world as a great painter of sunlight and of women. There could not be two. And he already felt the approach of a shadow menacing the glory of his sunlight—already stood alert and fixedly observant of a young man who had painted something disquieting into an unfinished canvas.

That man and the young girl whom he had painted to the astonishment and inward disturbance of José Querida, were having no easy time in that new world which they had created for themselves.

Embarked upon an enterprise in the management of which they were neither in accord nor ever seemed likely to be, they had, so far, weathered the storms of misunderstandings and the stress of prejudice. Blindly confident in Love, they were certain, so far, that it was Love itself that they worshipped no matter what rites and ceremonies each one observed in its adoration. Yet each was always attempting to convert the other to the true faith; and there were days of trouble and of tears and of telephones.

Neville presented a frightfully complex problem to Valerie West.

His even-tempered indifference to others—an indifference which had always characterised him—had left only a wider and deeper void now filling with his passion for her.

They were passing through a maze of cross-purposes; his ardent and exacting intolerance of any creed and opinion save his own was ever forcing her toward a more formal and literal appreciation of what he was determined must become a genuine and formal engagement—which attitude on his part naturally produced clash after clash between them.

That he entertained so confidently the conviction of her ultimate surrender to convention, at moments vexed her to the verge of anger. At times, too, his disposition to interfere with her liberty tried her patience. Again and again she explained to him the unalterable fundamentals of their pact. These were, first of all, her refusal to alienate him from his family and his own world; second, her right to her own individuality and freedom to support herself without interference or unrequested assistance from him; third, absolute independence of him in material matters and the perfect liberty of managing her own little financial affairs without a hint of dependence on him either before or after the great change.

That she posed only in costume now did not satisfy him. He did not wish her to pose at all; and they discussed various other theatres for her business activity. But she very patiently explained to him that she found, in posing for interesting people, much of the intellectual pleasure that he and other men found in painting; that the life and the environment, and the people she met, made her happy; and that she could not expect to meet cultivated people in any other way.

"I don't want to learn stenography and take dictation in a stuffy office, dear," she pleaded. "I don't want to sit all day in a library where people whisper about books. I don't want to teach in a public school or read novels to invalids, or learn how to be a trained nurse and place thermometers in people's mouths. I like children pretty well but I don't want to be a governess and teach other people's children; I want to be taught myself; I want to learn—I'm a sort of a child, too, dear; and it's the familiarity with wiser people and brighter people and pleasant surroundings that has made me as happy as I am—given me what I never had as a child. You don't understand, but I'm having my childhood now—nursery, kindergarten, parties, boarding-school, finishing school, début—all concentrated into this happy year of being among gay, clever, animated people."

"Yet you will not let me take you into a world which is still pleasanter—"

And the eternal discussion immediately became inevitable, tiring both with its earnestness and its utter absence of a common ground. Because in him apparently remained every vital germ of convention and of generations of training in every precept of formality; and in her—for with Valerie West adolescence had arrived late—that mystery had been responsible for far-reaching disturbances consequent on the starved years of self-imprisonment, of exaltations suppressed, of fears and doubts and vague desires and dreams ineffable possessing the silence of a lonely soul.

And so, essentially solitary, inevitably lonely, out of her own young heart and an untrained mind she was evolving a code of responsibility to herself and to the world.

Her ethics and her morals were becoming what wide, desultory, and unrestrained reading was making them; her passion for happiness and for truth, her restless intelligence, were prematurely forming her character. There was no one in authority to tell her—check, guide, or direct her in the revolt from dogmatism, pedantry, sophistry and conventionalism. And by this path youthful intelligence inevitably passes, incredulous of snare and pitfall where lie the bones of many a savant under magic blossoms nourished by creeds long dead.

"To bring no sorrow to any one, Louis—that is the way I am trying to live," she said, seriously.

"You are bringing it to me."

"If that is so—then I had better depart as I came and leave you in peace."

"It's too late."

"Perhaps it is not. Shall we try it?"

"Could you recover?"

"I don't know. I am willing to try for your sake."

"Do you want to?" he asked, almost angrily.

"I am not thinking of myself, Louis."

"I want you to. I don't want you not to think about yourself all the time."

She made a hopeless gesture, opening her arms and turning her palms outward:

"Kelly Neville! What do you suppose loving you means to me?"

"Don't you think of yourself at all when you love me?"

"Why—I suppose I do—in a way. I know I'm fortunate, happy—I—" She glanced up shyly—"I am glad that I am—loved—"

"You darling!"

She let him take her into his arms, suffered his caress, looking at him in silence out of eyes as dark and clear and beautiful as brown pools in a forest.

"You're just a bad, spoiled, perverse little kid, aren't you?" he said, rumpling her hair.

"You say so."

"Breaking my heart because you won't marry me."

"No, breaking my own because you don't really love me enough, yet."

"I love you too much—"

"That is literary bosh, Louis."

"Good God! Can't you ever understand that I'm respectable enough to want you for my wife?"

"You mean that you want me for what I do not wish to be. And you decline to love me unless I turn into a selfish, dependent, conventional nonentity, which you adore because respectable. Is that what you mean?"

"I want the laws of civilisation to safeguard you," he persisted patiently.

"I need no more protection than you need. I am not a baby. I am not afraid. Are you?"

"That is not the question—"

"Yes it is, dear. I stand in no fear. Why do you wish to force me to do what I believe would be a wrong to you? Can't you respect my disreputable convictions?"

"They are theories—not convictions—"

"Oh, Kelly, I'm so tired of hearing you say that!"

"I should think you would be, you little imp of perversity!"

"I am… . And I wonder how I can love you just as much, as though you were kind and reasonable and—and minded your own business, dear."

"Isn't it my business to tell the girl to whom I'm engaged what I believe to be right?"

"Yes; and it's her business to tell you" she said, smiling; and put her arms higher so that they slipped around his neck for a moment, then were quickly withdrawn.

"What a thoroughly obstinate boy you are!" she exclaimed. "We're wasting such lots of time in argument when it's all so very simple. Your soul is your own to develop; mine is mine. Noli, me tangere!"

But he was not to be pacified; and presently she went away to pour their tea, and he followed and sat down in an armchair near the fire, brooding gaze fixed on the coals.

They had tea in hostile silence; he lighted a cigarette, but presently flung it into the fire without smoking.

She said: "You know, Louis, if this is really going to be an unhappiness to you, instead of a happiness beyond words, we had better end it now." She added, with an irrepressible laugh, partly nervous, "Your happiness seems to be beyond words already. Your silence is very eloquent… . I think I'll take my doll and go home."

She rose, stood still a moment looking at him where he sat, head bent, staring into the coals; then a swift tenderness filled her eyes; her sensitive lips quivered; and she came swiftly to him and took his head into her arms.

"Dear," she whispered, "I only want to do the best for you. Let me try in my own way. It's all for you—everything I do or think or wish or hope is for you. Even I myself was made merely for you."

Sideways on the arm of his chair, she stooped down, laying her cheek against his, drawing his face closer.

"I am so hopelessly in love with you," she murmured; "if I make mistakes, forgive me; remember only that it is because I love you enough to die for you very willingly."

He drew her down into his arms. She was never quick to respond to the deeper emotions in him, but her cheeks and throat were flushed now, and, as his embrace enclosed her, she responded with a sudden flash of blind passion—a moment's impulsive self-surrender to his lips and arms—and drew away from him dazed, trembling, shielding her face with one arm.

All that the swift contact was awakening in him turned on her fiercely now; in his arms again she swayed, breathless, covering her face with desperate hands, striving to comprehend, to steady her senses, to reason while pulses and heart beat wildly and every vein ran fire.

"No—" she stammered—"this is—is wrong—wrong! Louis, I beg you, to remember what I am to you… . Don't kiss me again—I ask you not to—I pray that you won't… . We are—I am—engaged to you, dear… . Oh—it is wrong—wrong, now!—all wrong between us!"

"Valerie," he stammered, "you care nothing for any law—nor do I—now—"

"I do! You don't understand me! Let me go. Louis—you don't love me enough… . This—this is madness—wickedness!—you can't love me! You don't—you can't!"

"I do love you, Valerie—"

"No—no—or you would let me go!—or you would not kiss me again—"

She freed herself, breathless, crimson with shame and anger, avoiding his eyes, and slipped out of his embrace to her knees, sank down on the rug at his feet, and laid her head against the chair, breathing fast, both small hands pressed to her breast.

For a few minutes he let her lie so; then, stooping over her, white lipped, trembling:

"What can you expect if we sow the wind?"

She began to cry, softly: "You don't understand—you never have understood!"

"I understand this: that I am ready to take you in your way, now. I cannot live without you, and I won't. I care no longer how I take you, or when, or where, as long as I can have you for mine, to keep for ever, to love, to watch over, to worship… . Dear—will you speak to me?"

She shook her head, desolately, where it lay now against his knees, amid its tumbled hair.

Then he asked again for her forgiveness—almost fiercely, for passion still swayed him with every word. He told her he loved her, adored her, could not endure life without her; that he was only too happy to take her on any terms she offered.

"Louis," she said in a voice made very small and low by the crossed arms muffling her face, "I am wondering whether you will ever know what love is."

"Have I not proved that I love you?"

"I—don't know what it is you have proved… . We were engaged to each other—and—and—"

"I thought you cared nothing for such conventions!"

She began to cry again, silently.

"Valerie—darling—"

"No—you don't understand," she sobbed.

"Understand what, dearest—dearest—

"That I thought our love was its own protection—and mine."

He made no answer.

She knelt there silent for a little while, then put her hand up appealingly for his handkerchief.

"I have been very happy in loving you," she faltered; "I have promised you all there is of myself. And you have already had my best self. The rest—whatever it is—whatever happens to me—I have promised—so that there will be nothing of this girl called Valerie West which is not all yours—all, all—every thought, Louis, every pulse-beat—mind, soul, body… . But no future day had been set; I had thought of none as yet. Still—since I knew I was to be to you what I am to be, I have been very busy preparing for it—mind, soul, my little earthly possessions, my personal affairs in their small routine… . No bride in your world, busy with her trousseau, has been a happier dreamer than have I, Louis. You don't know how true I have tried to be to myself, and to the truth as I understand it—as true as I have been to you in thought and deed… . And, somehow, what threatened—a moment since—frightens me, humiliates me—"

She lifted her head and looked up at him with dimmed eyes:

"You were untrue to yourself, Louis—to your own idea of truth. And you were untrue to me. And for the first time I look at you, ashamed and shamed."

"Yes," he said, very white.

"Why did you offer our love such an insult?" she asked.

He made no answer.

"Was it because, in your heart, you hold a girl lightly who promised to give herself to you for your own sake, renouncing the marriage vows?"

"No! Good God—"

"Then—is it because you do not yet love me enough? For I shall not give myself to you until you do."

He hung his head.

"I think that is it," she said, sorrowfully.

"No. I'm no good," he said. "And that's the truth, Valerie." A dark flush stained his face and he turned it away, sitting there in silence, his tense clasp tightening on the arms of the chair. Then he said, still not meeting her eyes:

"Whatever your beliefs are you practice them; you are true to your convictions, loyal to yourself. I am only a miserable, rotten specimen of man who is true to nothing—not even to himself. I'm not worth your trouble, Valerie."

"Louis!"

"Well, what am I?" he demanded in fierce disgust. "I have told you that I believe in the conventions—and I violate every one of them. I'm a spectacle for gods and men!" His face was stern with self-disgust: he forced himself to meet her gaze, wincing under it; but he went on:

"I know well enough that I deserve your contempt; I've acquired plenty of self-contempt already. But I do love you, God knows how or in what manner, but I love you, cur that I am—and I respect you—oh, more that you understand, Valerie. And if I ask your mercy on such a man as I am, it is not because I deserve it."

"My mercy, Louis?"

She rose to her knees and laid both hands on his shoulders.

"You are only a man, dear—with all the lovable faults and sins and contradictions of one. But there is no real depravity in you any more than there is in me. Only—I think you are a little more selfish than I am—you lose self-command—" she blushed—"but that is because you are only a man after all… . I think, perhaps, that a girl's love is different in many ways. Dear, my love for you is perfectly honest. You believe it, don't you? If for one moment I thought it was otherwise, I'd never let you see me again. If I thought for one moment that anything spiritual was to be gained for us by denying that love to you or to myself—or by living out life alone without you, I have the courage to do it. Do you doubt it?"

"No," he said.

She sighed, and her gaze passed from his and became remote for a moment, then:

"I want to live my life with you," she said, wistfully; "I want to be to you all that the woman you love could possibly be. But to me, the giving of myself to you is to be, in my heart, a ceremony more solemn than any in the world—and it is to be a rite at which my soul shall serve on its knees, Louis."

"Dearest—dearest," he breathed, "I know—I understand—I ask your pardon. And I worship you."

Then a swift, smiling change passed over her face; and, her hands still resting on his shoulders, kneeling there before him, she bent forward and kissed him on the forehead.

"Pax," she said. "You are forgiven. Love me enough, Louis. And when I am quite sure you do, then—then—you may ask me, and I will answer you."

"I love you now, enough."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Then—ask," she said, faintly.

His lips moved in a voiceless question, she could not hear him, but she understood.

"In a year, I think," she answered, forcing her eyes to meet his, but the delicate rose colour was playing over her cheeks and throat.

"As long as that?"

"That is not long. Besides, perhaps you won't learn to love me enough even by that time. Do you think you will? If you really think so—perhaps in June—"

She watched him as he pressed her hands together and kissed them; laughed a little, shyly, as she suddenly divined a new tenderness and respect in his eyes—something matching the vague exaltation of her own romantic dreams.

"I will wait all my life if you wish it," he said.

"Do you mean it?"

"You know I do, now."

She considered him, smiling. "If you truly do feel that way—perhaps—perhaps it might really be in June—or in July—"

"You said June."

"Listen to the decree of the great god Kelly! He says it must be in June, and he shakes his thunderbolts and frowns."

"June! Say so, Valerie,"

"You have said so."

"But there's no use in my saying so if—"

"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, "the great god totters on his pedestal and the oracle falters and I see the mere man looking very humbly around the corner of the shrine at me, whispering, 'June, if you please, dear lady!'"

"Yes," he said, "that's what you see and hear. Now answer me, dear."

"And what am I to say?"

"June, please."

"June—please," she repeated, demurely.

"You darling!… What day?"

"Oh, that's too early to decide—"

"Please, dear!"

"No; I don't want to decide—"

"Dearest!"

"What?"

"Won't you answer me?"

"If you make me answer now, I'll be tempted to fix the first of April."

"All right, fix it."

"It's All Fool's day, you know," she threatened. "Probably it is peculiarly suitable for us… . Very well, then, I'll say it."

She was laughing when he caught her hands and looked at her, grave, unsmiling. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and her lip trembled.

"Forgive me, I meant no mockery," she whispered. "I had already fixed the first day of June for—for the great change in our lives. Are you content?"

"Yes." And before she knew what he was doing a brilliant flashed along her ring finger and clung sparkling to it; and she stared at the gold circlet and the gem flashing in the firelight.

There were tears in her eyes when she kissed it, looking at him while her soft lips rested on the jewel.

Neither spoke for a moment; then, still looking at him, she drew the ring from her finger, touched it again with her lips, and laid it gently in his hand.

"No, dear," she said.

He did not urge her; but she knew he still believed that she would come to think as he thought; and the knowledge edged her lips with tremulous humour. But her eyes were very sweet and tender as she watched him lay away the ring as though it and he were serenely biding their time.

"Such a funny boy," she said, "and such a dear one. He will never, never grow up, will he?"

"Such an idiot, you mean," he said, drawing her into the big chair beside him.

"Yes, I mean that, too," she said, impudently, nose in the air. "Because, if I were you, Louis, I wouldn't waste any more energy in worrying about a girl who is perfectly able to take care of herself, but transfer it to a boy who apparently is not."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean about your painting. Dear, you've got it into that obstinate head of yours that there's something lacking in your pictures, and there isn't."

"Oh, Valerie! You know there is!"

"No, no, no! There isn't anything lacking in them. They're all of you, Louis—every bit of you—as far as you have lived."

"What!"

"Certainly. As far as you have lived. Now live a little more, and let more things come into your life. You can't paint what isn't in you; and there's nothing in you except what you get out of life."

She laid her soft cheek against his.

"Get a little real love out of life, Louis; a little real love. Then surely, surely your canvases can not disguise that you know what life means to us all. Love nobly; and the world will not doubt that love is noble; love mercifully; and the world will understand mercy. For I believe that what you are must show in your work, dear.

"Until now the world has seen in your work only the cold splendour, or dreamy glamour, or the untroubled sweetness and brilliancy of passionless romance. I love your work. It is happiness to look at it; it thrills, bewitches, enthralls!… Dear, forgive me if in it I have not yet found a deeper inspiration… . And that inspiration, to be there, must be first in you, my darling—born of a wider interest in your fellow men, a little tenderness for friends—a more generous experience and more real sympathy with humanity—and perhaps you may think it out of place for me to say it—but—a deeper, truer, spiritual conviction.

"Do you think it strange of me to have such convictions? I can't escape them. Those who are merciful, those who are kind, to me are Christ-like. Nothing else matters. But to be kind is to be first of all interested in the happiness of others. And you care nothing for people. You must care, Louis!

"And, somehow, you who are, at heart, good and kind and merciful, have not really awakened real love in many of those about you. For one thing your work has absorbed you. But if, at the same time, you could pay a little more attention to human beings—"

"Valerie!" he said in astonishment, "I have plenty of friends. Do you mean to say I care nothing for them?"

"How much do you care, Louis?"

"Why, I—" He fell silent, troubled gaze searching hers.

She smiled: "Take Sam, for example. The boy adores you. He's a rotten painter, I know—and you don't even pretend to an interest in what he does because you are too honest to praise it. But, Louis, he's a lovable fellow—and he does the best that's in him. You needn't pretend to care for what he does—but if you could show that you do care for and respect the effort—"

"I do, Valerie—when I think about it!"

"Then think about it; and let Sam know that you think about his efforts and himself. And do the same for Harry Annan. He's a worse painter than Sam—but do you think he doesn't know it? Don't you realise what a lot of heartache the monkey-shines of those two boys conceal?"

"I am fond of them," he said, slowly. "I like people, even if I don't show it—"

"Ah, Louis! Louis! That is the world's incurable hurt—the silence that replies to its perplexity—the wistful appeal that remains unanswered… . And many, many vex God with the desolation of their endless importunities and complaints when a look, a word, a touch from a human being would relieve them of the heaviest of all burdens—a sad heart's solitude."

He put his arm around her, impulsively:

"You little angel," he said, tenderly.

"No—only a human girl who has learned what solitude can mean."

"I shall make you forget the past," he said.

"No, dear—for that might make me less kind." She put her lips against his cheek, thoughtfully: "And—I think—that you are going to need all the tenderness in me—some day, Louis—as I need all of yours… . We shall have much to learn—after the great change… . And much to endure. And I think we will need all the kindness that we can give each other—and all that the world can spare us."