ish, 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 _somet