ime, but he could not survive Michael's too
polite "Mr. Ayliffe," although he did not perhaps realize all the
deadliness of this undergraduate insult. Clarissa went off to bed after
expressing once more her wish that Michael would sit for her.

"Oh, what for? Of course he will, Clarie," cried Stella.

"Of course I won't," said Michael, ruffling.

"What do you want him to sit for?" Stella persisted, paying not the
least regard to Michael's objection.

"Oh, something ascetic," said Clarie, staring earnestly into space as if
the pictorial idea was being dangled from the ceiling.

"Just now it was to be something passionate," Michael pointed out
scornfully. He suspected Clarissa's courage in the presence of Stella's
disdainful frankness.

"Ah, perhaps it will be both!" Clarie promised, and "Good night, most
darling Stella," she murmured intensely. Then with one backward look of
reproach for Michael she walked with rather self-conscious sinuousness
out of the room and up to bed.

"My hat, Stella, where did you pick up that girl? She's like a
performing leopard!" Michael burst out. "She's utterly stupid and
utterly second-rate and she closes her eyes for effect and breathes into
your face and doesn't wear stays."

"I get something out of all these queer people," Stella explained.

"New-art flower-vases, I should think," scoffed Michael. "Why on earth
you wanted to fetch me from Cornwall to look after you in this crowd of
idiots I can't imagine. I may not be a great pianist in the making, and
I'm jolly glad I'm not, if it's to make one depend on the flattery of
these fools."

"You know perfectly well that most of the evening you enjoyed yourself
very much. And you oughtn't to be horrid about my friends. I think
they're all so dreadfully touching."

"Yes, and touched," Michael grumbled. "You're simply playing at being in
Bohemia. You'd be the first to laugh at me, if I dressed up Alan and
Maurice Avery and half a dozen of my friends in velvet jackets and
walked about Paris with them, smelling of onions."

"My dear Michael," Stella argued, "do get out of your head the notion
that I dressed these people up. I found them like that. They're not
imported dolls."

"Well, you're not bound to know them. I tell you they all hang on to you
because you have money. That compensates for any jealousy they might
feel because you are better at your business than any of them are at
theirs."

"Rot!" Stella ejaculated.

Howeve