ising inflection.

"What is the use of pretending?" he said, shortly.

"Pretending!" she repeated, mimicking him delightedly. Then with a
clear, frank laugh: "Oh, you great, big infant! The idea of _you_ being
the famous painter Louis Neville! I wish there was a nursery here. I'd
place you in it and let you pout!"

"That's more pretence," he said, "and you know it."

"What silly things you do say, Louis! As though people could find life
endurable if they did not pretend. Of course I'm pretending. And if a
girl pretends hard enough it sometimes comes true."

"What comes true?"

"Ah!--you ask me too much.... Well, for example, if I pretend I don't
mind your ill-temper it _may_ come true that you will be amiable to me
before I go home."

There was no smile from him, no response. The warmth of the burning logs
deepened the colour in her cold cheeks. Snow crystals on her dark hair
melted into iris-rayed drops. She stretched her arms to the fire, and
her eyes fell on Gladys and her kitten, slumbering, softly embraced.

"Oh, do look, Kelly! How perfectly sweet and cunning! Gladys has her
front paws right around the kitten's neck."

Impulsively she knelt down, burying her face in the fluffy heap; the
kitten partly opened its bluish eyes; the mother-cat stretched her legs,
yawned, glanced up, and began to lick the kitten, purring loudly.

For a moment or two the girl caressed the drowsy cats, then, rising, she
resumed her seat, sinking back deeply into the arm-chair and casting a
sidelong and uncertain glance at Neville.

The flames burned steadily, noiselessly, now; nothing else stirred in
the studio; there was no sound save the ghostly whisper of driving snow
blotting the glass roof above.

Her gaze wandered over the silken disorder in the studio, arrested here
and there as the firelight gleamed on bits of armour--on polished
corselet and helmet and the tall hilts of swords. Then she looked upward
where the high canvas loomed a vast expanse of gray, untouched except
for the brushed-in outlines of men in shadowy processional.

She watched Neville, who had begun to prowl about in the disorder of
the place, stepping over trailing velvets, avoiding manikins armed
cap-a-pie, moving restlessly, aimlessly. And her eyes followed his
indecision with a smile that gradually became perplexed and then a
little troubled.

For even in the uncertain firelight she was aware of the change in his
face--of features once boyish an