"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 debris, 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 VIII

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 Jose 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 naive, 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 Jose 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, Jose."

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, Jose."

"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, Jose," 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, Jose? 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.

"Jose," 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.

"Jose," 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."

"Jose!" 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, Jose!" 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, Jose—"



"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, Jose."

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, Jose?" she asked, laughing.



"Perhaps. You will desire to be, too, some day. A good school, an accomplished scholar."

"And the schoolmaster? Oh! Jose!"

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, Jose," 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? Jose, 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?"

"Jose 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 IX

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, naively, "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 Jose 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, debut—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."



CHAPTER X

It was slowly becoming evident to Neville that Valerie's was the stronger character—not through any genius for tenacity nor on account of any domineering instinct—but because, mistaken or otherwise in her ethical reasoning, she was consistent, true to her belief, and had the courage to live up to it. And this made her convictions almost unassailable.

Slavery to established custom of any kind she smilingly disdained, refusing to submit to restrictions which centuries of social usage had established, when such social restrictions and limitations hampered or annoyed her.

Made conscious by the very conventions designed to safeguard unconsciousness; made wise by the unwisdom of a civilisation which required ignorance of innocence, she had as yet lost none of her sweetness and confidence in herself and in a world which she considered a friendly one at best and, at worst, more silly than vicious.

Her life, the experience of a lonely girlhood in the world, wide and varied reading, unwise and otherwise, and an intelligence which needed only experience and training, had hastened to a premature maturity her impatience with the faults of civilisation. And in the honest revolt of youth, she forgot that what she rejected was, after all, civilisation itself, and that as yet there had been offered no acceptable substitute for its faulty codification.

To do one's best was to be fearlessly true to one's convictions and let God judge; that was her only creed. And from her point of view humanity needed no other.

So she went about the pleasure and happiness of living with a light heart and a healthy interest, not doubting that all was right between her and the world, and that the status quo must endure.

And endless misunderstandings ensued between her and the man she loved. She was a very busy business girl and he objected. She went about to theatres and parties and dinners and concerts with other men; and Neville didn't like it. Penrhyn Cardemon met her at a theatrical supper and asked her to be one of his guests on his big yacht, the Mohave, fitted out for the Azores. There were twenty in the party, and she would have gone had not Neville objected angrily.

It was not his objection but his irritation that confused her. She could discover no reason for it.

"It can't be that you don't trust me," she said to him, "so it must be that you're lonely without me, even when you go to spend two weeks with your parents. I don't mind not going if you don't wish me to, Louis, and I'll stay here in town while you visit your father and mother, but it seems a little bit odd of you not to let me go when I can be of no earthly use to you."

Her gentleness with him, and her sweet way of reasoning made him ashamed.

"It's the crowd that's going, Valerie—Cardemon, Querida, Marianne Valdez—where did you meet her, anyway?"

"In her dressing room at the Opera. She's perfectly sweet. Isn't she all right?"

"She's Cardemon's mistress," he said, bluntly.

A painful colour flushed her face and neck; and at the same instant he realised what he had said.

Neither spoke for a while; he went on with his painting; she, standing once more for the full-length portrait, resumed her pose in silence.

After a while she heard his brushes clatter to the floor, saw him leave his easel, was aware that he was coming toward her. And the next moment he had dropped at her feet, kneeling there, one arm tightening around her knees, his head pressed close.

Listlessly she looked down at him, dropped one slim hand on his shoulder, considering him.

"The curious part of it is," she said, "that all the scorn in your voice was for Marianne Valdez and none for Penrhyn Cardemon."

He said nothing.

"Such a queer, topsy-turvy world," she sighed, letting her hand wander from his shoulder to his thick, short hair. She caressed his forehead thoughtfully.

"I suppose some man will say that of me some day.... But that is a little matter—compared to making life happy for you.... To be your mistress could never make me unhappy."

"To be your husband—and to put an end to all these damnable doubts and misgivings and cross-purposes would make me happy all my life!" he burst out with a violence that startled her.

"Hush, Louis. We must not begin that hopeless argument again."

"Valerie! Valerie! You are breaking my heart!"

"Hush, dear. You know I am not."

She looked down at him; her lip was trembling.

Suddenly she slid down to the floor and knelt there confronting him, her arms around him.

"Dearer than all the world and heaven!—do you think that I am breaking your heart? You know I am not. You know what I am doing for your sake, for your family's sake, for my own. I am only giving you a love that can cause them no pain, bring no regret to you. Take it, then, and kiss me."

But the days were full of little scenes like this—of earnest, fiery discussions, of passionate arguments, of flashes of temper ending in tears and heavenly reconciliation.

He had gone for two weeks to visit his father and mother at their summer home near Portsmouth, and before he went he took her in his arms and told her how ashamed he was of his bad temper at the idea of her going on the Mohave, and said that she might go; that he did trust her anywhere, and that he was trying to learn to concede to her the same liberty of action and of choice that any man enjoyed.

But she convinced him very sweetly that she really had no desire to go, and sent him off to Spindrift House happy, and madly in love; which resulted in two letters a day from him, and in her passing long evenings in confidential duets with Rita Tevis.

Rita had taken the bedroom next to Valerie's, and together they had added the luxury of a tiny living room to the suite.

It was the first time that either had ever had any place in which to receive anybody; and now, delighted to be able to ask people, they let it be known that their friends could have tea with them.

Ogilvy and Annan had promptly availed themselves.

"This is exceedingly grand," said Ogilvy, examining everything in a tour around the pretty little sitting room. "We can have all kinds of a rough house now." And he got down on his hands and knees in the middle of the rug and very gravely turned a somersault.

"Sam! Behave! Or I'll set my parrot on you!" exclaimed Valerie.

Ogilvy sat up and inspected the parrot.

"You know," he said, "I believe I've seen that parrot somewhere."

"Impossible, my dear friend—unless you've been in my bedroom."

Ogilvy got up, dusted his trowsers, and walked over to the parrot.

"Well it looks like a bird I used to know—I—it certainly resembles—" He hesitated, then addressing the bird:

"Hello, Leparello—you old scoundrel!" he said, cautiously.

"Forget it!" muttered the bird, cocking his head and lifting first one slate-coloured claw from his perch, then the other;—"forget it! Help! Oh, very well. God bless the ladies!"

"Where on earth did you ever before see my parrot?" asked Valerie, astonished. Ogilvy appeared to be a little out of countenance, too.

"Oh, I really don't remember exactly where I did see him," he tried to explain; and nobody believed him.