.. You _said_ we were going to have tea."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a few moments neither spoke; then:

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

"Why, Valerie! What a--an unusual--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She nodded and held out her hand with decision:

"Good-night."

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

"Do you really want me?"