turbed you, Mr. Neville?"

"Not a bit. You never do any more than does Gladys." He glanced absently
at the cat, then, facing his canvas, backed away from it, palette in
hand.

For ten minutes he examined his work, shifting his position from minute
to minute, until the change of positions brought him backed up beside
Valerie, and his thigh brushing her arm made him aware of her. Glancing
down with smiling apology his eye fell on the wax, and was arrested.
Then he bent over the work she had done, examining it, twirled the top
of the stool, and inspected it carefully from every side.

"Have you ever studied modelling, Miss West?"

"No," she said, blushing, "you must know that I haven't." And looked up
expecting to see laughter in his eyes; and saw only the curiosity of
interest.

"How did you know how to start this?"

"I have often watched you."

"Is that all the instruction you've ever had in modelling?"

She could not quite bring herself to believe in his pleasant
seriousness:

"Y-yes," she admitted, "except when I have watched John Burleson.
But--this is simply rotten--childish--isn't it?"

"No," he said in a matter of fact tone, "it's interesting."

"Do you really think--mean--"

He looked down at her, considering her while the smile that she knew and
liked best and thought best suited to his face, began to glimmer; that
amused, boyish, bantering smile hinting of experience and wisdom
delightfully beyond her.

"I really think that you're a very unusual girl," he said. "I don't want
to spoil you by telling you so every minute."

"You don't spoil me by telling me so. Sometimes I think you may spoil me
by not telling me so."

"Miss West! You're spoiled already! I'm throwing bouquets at you every
minute! You're about the only girl who ever sat for me with whom I talk
unreservedly and incessantly."

"Really, Mr. Neville?"

"Yes--really, Mr. Neville," he repeated, laughing--"you bad, spoiled
little beauty! You know devilish well that if there's any intellectual
space between you and me it's purely a matter of circumstance and
opportunity."

"Do you think me silly enough to believe that!"

"I think you clever enough to know it without my telling you."

"I wish you wouldn't say that."

She was still smiling but in the depths of her eyes he felt that the
smile was not genuine.

"See here," he said, "I don't want you to think that I don't mean what I
say. I do. You're as intelligent a woman as I eve