me by. I am twenty-seven; there has never been a death in my family, or among my intimate friends."
"Have you any intimate friends?"
"Well—perhaps not—in the strict sense. I don't confide."
"Have you never cared, very much, for anybody—any woman?"
"Not sentimentally," he returned, laughing. "Do you think that a good course of modern flirtation—a thorough schooling in the old-fashioned misfortunes of true love would inject into my canvases that elusively occult quality they're all howling for?"
She remained smilingly silent.
"Perhaps something less strenuous would do," he said, mischievously—"a pretty amourette?—just one of those gay, frivolous, Louis XV affairs with some daintily receptive girl, not really improper, but only ultra fashionable. Do you think that would help some, Valerie?"
She raised her eyes, still smiling, a little incredulous, very slightly embarrassed:
"I don't think your painting requires any such sacrifices of you, Mr. Neville…. Are you going to take me somewhere to dinner? I'm dreadfully hungry."
"You poor little girl, of course I am. Besides, you must be suffering under the terrible suppression of that 'thorough talk' which you—"
"It doesn't really require a thorough talk," she said; "I'll tell you now what I had to say. No, don't interrupt, please! I want to—please let me—so that nothing will mar our enjoyment of each other and of the gay world around us when we are dining…. It is this: Sometimes—once in a while—I become absurdly lonely, which makes me a fool, temporarily. And—will you let me telephone you at such times?—just to talk to you—perhaps see you for a minute?"
"Of course. You know my telephone number. Call me up whenever you like."
"Could I see you at such moments? I—there's a—some—a kind of sentiment about me—when I'm very lonely; and I've been foolish enough to let one or two men see it—in fact I've been rather indiscreet—silly—with a man—several men—now and then. A lonely girl is easily sympathised with—and rather likes it; and is inclined to let herself go a little…. I don't want to…. And at times I've done it…. Sam Ogilvy nearly kissed me, which really doesn't count—does it? But I let Harry Annan do it, once…. If I'm weak enough to drift into such silliness I'd better find a safeguard. I've been thinking—thinking—that it really does originate in a sort of foolish loneliness …not in anything worse. So I thought I'd have a thorough talk with you about it. I'm twenty-one—with all my experience of life and of men crowded into a single winter and spring. I have as friends only the few people I have met through you. I have nobody to see unless I see them—nowhere to go unless I go where they ask me…. So I thought I'd ask you to let me depend a little on you, sometimes—as a refuge from isolation and morbid thinking now and then. And from other mischief—for which I apparently have a capacity—to judge by what I've done—and what I've let men do already."
She laid her hand lightly on his arm in sudden and impulsive confidence:
"That's my 'thorough talk.' I haven't any one else to tell it to. And I've told you the worst." She smiled at him adorably: "And now I am ready to go out with you," she said,—"go anywhere in the world with you, Kelly. And I am going to be perfectly happy—if you are."
CHAPTER III
One day toward the middle of June Valerie did not arrive on time at the studio. She had never before been late.
About two o'clock Sam Ogilvy sauntered in, a skull pipe in his mouth, his hair rumpled:
"It's that damn mermaid of mine," he said, "can't you come up and look at her and tell me what's the trouble, Kelly?"
"Not now. Who's posing?"
"Rita. She's in a volatile humour, too—fidgets; denies fidgeting; reproaches me for making her keep quiet; says I draw like a bum chimney—no wonder my work's rotten! Besides, she's in a tub of water, wearing that suit of fish-scales I had made for Violet Cliland, and she says it's too tight and she's tired of the job, anyway. Fancy my mental condition."
"Oh, she won't throw you down. Rita is a good sport," said Neville.
"I hope so. It's an important picture. Really, Kelly, it's great stuff—a still, turquoise-tinted pool among wet rocks; ebb tide; a corking little mermaid caught in a pool left by the receding waves—all tones and subtle values," he declared, waving his arm.
"Don't paint things in the air with your thumb," said Neville, coldly.
"No wonder Rita is nervous."
"Rita is nervous," said Ogilvy, "because she's been on a bat and supped somewhere until the coy and rosy dawn chased her homeward. And your pretty paragon, Miss West, was with the party—"
"What?" said Neville, sharply.
"Sure thing! Harry Annan, Rita, Burleson, Valerie—and I don't know who else. They feasted somewhere east of Coney—where the best is like the würst—and ultimately became full of green corn, clams, watermelon, and assorted fidgets…. Can't you come up and look at my picture?"
Neville got up, frowning, and followed Ogilvy upstairs.
Rita Tevis, swathed in a blanket from which protruded a dripping tinselled fish's tail, sat disconsolately on a chair, knitting a red-silk necktie for some party of the second part, as yet unidentified.
"Mr. Neville," she said, "Sam has been quarrelling with me every minute while I'm doing my best in that horrid tub of water. If anybody thinks it's a comfortable pose, let them try it! I wish—I wish I could have the happiness of seeing Sam afloat in this old fish-scale suit with every spangle sticking into him and his legs cramped into this unspeakable tail!"
She extended a bare arm, shook hands, pulled up her blanket wrap, and resumed her knitting with a fierce glance at Ogilvy, who had attempted an appealing smile.
Neville stood stock-still before the canvas. The picture promised well; it was really beautiful—the combined result of several outdoor studies now being cleverly worked up. But Ogilvy's pictures never kept their promise.
"Also," observed Rita, reproachfully, "I posed en plein air for those rainbow sketches of his—and though it was a lonely cove with a cunningly secluded little crescent beach, I was horribly afraid of somebody coming—and besides I got most cruelly sun-burned—"
"Rita! You said you enjoyed that excursion!" exclaimed Ogilvy, with pathos.
"I said it to flatter that enormous vanity of yours, Sam. I had a perfectly wretched time."
"What sort of a time did you have last evening?" inquired Neville, turning from the picture.
"Horrid. Everybody ate too much, and Valerie spooned with a new man—I don't remember his name. She went out in a canoe with him and they sang 'She kissed him on the gangplank when the boat moved out.'"
Neville, silent, turned to the picture once more. In a low rapid voice he indicated to Ogilvy where matters might be differently treated, stepped back a few paces, nodded decisively, and turned again to Rita:
"I've been waiting for Miss West," he said. "Have you any reason to think that she might not keep her appointment this morning?"
"She had a headache when we got home,"
