ll indeed, and asked just
how she proposed to put her theory to the test.

"I told you that a youth was painting me."

"But you also said he looked like a corpse," Michael quickly
interjected. "You surely haven't fallen in love with somebody who looks
like a corpse?"

"I'm not in love with his outside, but I am fascinated by his inside,"
Stella admitted.

Michael looked darkly for a moment, overshadowed by the thought of the
fellow's presumption.

"I never yet met a painter who had very much inside," he commented.

"But then, my dearest Michael, I suppose you'll confess that your
acquaintanceship with the arts as practiced not talked about is rather
small."

Michael looked round him and eyed all Paris with comprehensive
hostility.

"And I suppose this chap is in Paris now," he said. "Well, I can't do
anything. I suppose for a long time now you've been making a fool of
yourself over him. What have you fetched me to Paris for?"

He felt resentful to think that his hope of Stella and Alan falling in
love with one another was to be broken up by this upstart painter whom
he had never seen.

"I've certainly not been making a fool of myself," Stella flamed. "But
I thought I would rather you were close at hand."

"And who's this Clarissa Vine?" Michael indignantly demanded.

"She's the girl I traveled with to Paris."

"But I never heard of her before. All this comes of your taking that
studio before we moved to Cheyne Walk."

By the token that Stella did not contradict him, Michael knew that all
this had indeed come from that studio, and to show his disapproval of
the studio, he began to rail at Clarissa.

"I can't bear that overblown type of girl. I suppose every night she'll
sit and talk hot air till three o'clock in the morning. I shall go mad,"
Michael exclaimed, aghast at the prospective futility of the immediate
future.

Stella insisted that Clarissa was a good sort, that she had had an
unhappy love-affair, that she thought nothing of men but only of her
art, that she made one want to work and was therefore a valuable
companion, and, finally, to appease if possible Michael's mistrust of
Clarie by advertising her last advantage, Stella said that she could not
stand George Ayliffe.

Michael announced that, as Miss Vine had scarcely condescended to
address a single word to him in the quarter of an hour he was waiting
for Stella to dress, it was impossible for him to say whether he could
stand her or n