ou're not too old to have me as a playmate, Sweetness, are you?"

She seemed to be doubtful.

"What! Nonsense! And you're not too old to be bullied and coaxed and
petted----"

"Yes, I am."

"And you're not too old to pose for me----"

She grew pink and looked down at the submerged goldfish. And, keeping
her eyes there:

"I wanted to ask you," she said, "how much longer you think you would
require me--that way."

There was a silence. Then she looked at him out of her frank grey
eyes.

"You know I'll do what you wish," she said. "And I know it is quite
all right...." She smiled at him. "I belong to you: you made me....
And you know all about me. So you ought to use me as you wish."

"You don't want to pose?" he said.

"Yes, except----"

"Very well."

"Are you annoyed?"

"No, Sweetness. It's all right."

"You are annoyed--disappointed! And I won't have it. I--I couldn't
stand it--to have you displeased----"

He said pleasantly:

"I'm not displeased, Dulcie. And there's no use discussing it. If you
have the slightest feeling that way, when we go back to town I'll do
things like the Arethusa from somebody else----"

"Please don't!" she exclaimed in such naive alarm that he began to
laugh and she blushed vividly.

"Oh, you are feminine, all right!" he said. "If it isn't to be you it
isn't to be anybody."

"I didn't mean that.... _Yes_, I did!"

"Oh, Dulcie! Shame! _You_ jealous!--even to the verge of sacrificing
your own feelings----"

"I don't know what it is, but I'd rather you used me for your
Arethusa. You know," she added wistfully, "that we began it
together."

"Right, Sweetness. And we'll finish it together or not at all. Are you
satisfied?"

She smiled, sighed, nodded. He released her lovely, childlike hands
and she walked to the doorway of the summer house and looked out over
the wall-bed, where tall thickets of hollyhock and blue larkspur
stretched away in perspective toward a grove of trees and a little
pond beyond.

His painter's eye, already busy with the beauty of her face and
figure against the riot of flowers, and almost mechanically
transposing both into terms of colour and value, went blind suddenly
as she turned and looked at him.

And for the first time--perhaps with truer vision--he became aware of
what else this young girl was besides a satisfying combination of tint
and contour--this lithe young thing palpitating with life--this
slender, gently breathing girl with h