ccustomed to models I
bring there for my summer work. You'll be very comfortable, and you'll
feel quite at home. We live very simply at Foreland Farms. Everybody
will be kind and nobody will bother you, and you can do exactly as you
please, because we all do that at Foreland Farms. Will you come when
I'm ready to go up?"

She gave him a sweet, confused glance from her grey eyes.

"Do you think your family would mind?"

"Mind?" He smiled. "We never interfere with one another's affairs.
It's not like many families, I fancy. We take it for granted that
nobody in the family could do anything not entirely right. So we take
that for granted and it's a jolly sensible arrangement."

She turned her face on the pillow presently; the ice-bag slid off;
she sat up in her bathrobe, stretched her arms, smiled faintly:

"Shall I try again?" she asked.

"Oh, Lord!" he said, "_would_ you? Upon my word, I believe you would!
No more posing to-day! I'm not a murderer. Lie there until you're
ready to dress, and then ring for Selinda."

"Don't you want me?"

"Yes, but I want you alive, not dead! Anyway, I've got to talk to
Westmore this morning, so you may be as lazy as you like--lounge
about, read----" He went over to her, patted her cheek in the smiling,
absent-minded way he had with her: "Tell me, ducky, how are you
feeling, anyway?"

It confused her dreadfully to blush when he touched her, but she
always did; and she turned her face away now, saying that she was
quite all right again.

Preoccupied with his own thoughts, he nodded:

"That's fine," he said. "Now, trot along to Selinda, and when you're
fixed up you can have the run of the place to yourself."

"Could I have my slippers?" She was very shy even about her bare feet
when she was not actually posing.

He found her slippers for her, laid them beside the lounge, and
strolled away. Westmore rang a moment later, but when he blew in like
a noisy breeze Dulcie had disappeared.

"My little model toppled over," said Barres, taking his visitor's
outstretched hand and wincing under the grip. "I shall cut out work
while this weather lasts."

Westmore turned toward the Arethusa, laughed at the visible influence
of Manship.

"All the same, Garry," he said, "there's a lot in your running nymph.
It's nice; it's knowing."

"That is pleasant to hear from a sculptor."

"Sculptor? Sometimes I feel like a sculpin--prickly heat, you know."
He laughed heartily at his own wittic