looked at
Valerie.

"You asked me who was the first man for whom I posed. I'll tell you if
you wish to know. It was Penrhyn Cardemon!... And I was eighteen years
old."

Valerie dropped her book in astonishment.

"Penrhyn Cardemon!" she repeated. "Why, he isn't an artist!"

"He has a studio."

"Where?"

"On Fifth Avenue."

"What does he do there?"

"Deviltry."

Valerie's face was blank; Rita sat sullenly cradling one knee in her
arms, looking at the floor, her soft, gold hair hanging over her face
and forehead so that it shadowed her face.

"I've meant to tell you for a long time," she went on; "I would have
told you if Cardemon had ever sent for you to--to pose--in his place."

"He asked me to go on _The Mohave_."

"I'd have warned you if Louis Neville had not objected."

"Do you suppose Louis knew?"

"No. He scarcely knows Penrhyn Cardemon. His family and Cardemon are
neighbours in the country, but the Nevilles and the Collises are
snobs--I'm speaking plainly, Valerie--and they have no use for that
red-faced, red-necked, stocky young millionaire."

Valerie sat thinking; Rita, nursing her knee, brooded under the bright
tangle of her hair, linking and unlinking her fingers as she gently
swayed her foot to and fro.

"That's how it is," she said at last. "Now you know."

Valerie's head was still lowered, but she raised her eyes and looked
straight at Rita where she sat on the sofa's edge, carelessly swinging
her foot to and fro.

"Was it--Penrhyn Cardemon?" she asked.

"Yes.... I thought it had killed any possibility of ever caring--that
way--for any other man."

"But it hasn't?"

"No."

"And--you are in love?"

"Yes."

"With John Burleson?"

Rita looked up from the burnished disorder of her hair:

"I have been in love with him for three years," she said, "and you are
the only person in the world except myself who knows it."

Valerie rose and walked over to Rita and seated herself beside her. Then
she put one arm around her; and Rita bit her lip and stared at space,
swinging her slender foot.

"You poor dear," said Valerie. Rita's bare foot hung inert; the silken
slipper dropped from it to the floor; and then her head fell, sideways,
resting on Valerie's shoulder, showering her body with its tangled gold.

Valerie said, thoughtfully: "Girls don't seem to have a very good
chance.... I had no idea about Cardemon--that he was that kind of a man.
A girl never knows. Men can be so attra