-everybody but Billy. Billy, indeed, of them all, had
been strangely silent ever since they entered the studio. She stood now
a little apart. Her eyes were wide, and a bit frightened. Her fingers
were twisting the corners of her handkerchief nervously. She was looking
to the right and to the left, and everywhere she saw--herself.

Sometimes it was her full face, sometimes her profile; sometimes there
were only her eyes peeping from above a fan, or peering from out brown
shadows of nothingness. Once it was merely the back of her head showing
the mass of waving hair with its high lights of burnished bronze. Again
it was still the back of her head with below it the bare, slender
neck and the scarf-draped shoulders. In this picture the curve of a
half-turned cheek showed plainly, and in the background was visible
a hand holding four playing cards, at which the pictured girl was
evidently looking. Sometimes it was a merry Billy with dancing eyes;
sometimes a demure Billy with long lashes caressing a flushed cheek.
Sometimes it was a wistful Billy with eyes that looked straight into
yours with peculiar appeal. But always it was--Billy.

"There, I think the tilt of this chin is perfect." It was Bertram
speaking.

Billy gave a sudden cry. Her face whitened. She stumbled forward.

"No, no, Bertram, you--you didn't mean the--the tilt of the chin," she
faltered wildly.

The man turned in amazement.

"Why--Billy!" he stammered. "Billy, what is it?"

The girl fell back at once. She tried to laugh lightly. She had seen the
dismayed questioning in her lover's eyes, and in the eyes of William and
the others.

"N-nothing," she gesticulated hurriedly. "It was nothing at all, truly."

"But, Billy, it _was_ something." Bertram's eyes were still troubled.
"Was it the picture? I thought you liked this picture."

Billy laughed again--this time more naturally.

"Bertram, I'm ashamed of you--expecting me to say I 'like' any of this,"
she scolded, with a wave of her hands toward the omnipresent Billy.
"Why, I feel as if I were in a room with a thousand mirrors, and that
I'd been discovered putting rouge on my cheeks and lampblack on my
eyebrows!"

William laughed fondly. Aunt Hannah and Marie gave an indulgent smile.
Cyril actually chuckled. Bertram only still wore a puzzled expression as
he laid aside the canvas in his hands.

Billy examined intently a sketch she had found with its back to the
wall. It was not a pretty sketch; i