;
yet there was no visible tension. Never dead, never hard, but limp,--as
limp as flowing, rushing water,--she whirled and swayed through all the
emotions until, at the highest pitch of the mounting music, she fell
prone, riven by a single, throbbing sob. Down came the curtain. The
music faded away in a long, descending sweep.

Men shouted hoarsely, unaware of what they were crying out, and women
for once clapped to make a noise, and split their gloves. A youth, his
hair disordered and a hectic flush in his cheeks, rushed straight for
the stage, crying, "Who is she?"

Lewis stuck out his foot and tripped him. Great was his fall, and the
commotion thereof switched the emotions of the throng back to sanity.
Conventional, dogged clapping and shouts of "_Bis! Bis_!" were relied on
to bring the curtain up again, and relied on in vain. Once more Mrs.
Ruttle-Marter was surrounded and beseeched to use her best efforts. As
she acceded, a servant handed Lewis a scribbled note. "Come and take me
out of this. Vi," he read. He slipped out behind the servant.

In the cab they were silent for a long time. Lewis's eyes kept wandering
over Vi, conventional once more, and lazing in her corner.

"Well," she drawled at last, "what did you think of it?"

"Think of it?" said Lewis. "There were three times when I wanted to
shout, 'Hold that pose!' After that--well, after that my brain stopped
working."

"Do you mean it?" asked Vi.

"Mean what?"

"About wanting me to hold a pose."

"Yes," said Lewis; "of course. What of it?"

"What of it? Why, I will. When?"

"Do _you_ mean it?" asked Lewis.

Vi nodded.

"Name your own time."

"To-morrow," said Vi, "at ten."

The following morning Lewis was up early, putting his great, bare studio
in fitting order, and trying to amplify and secure the screened-in
corner which previous models had frequently damned as a purely tentative
dressing-room. Promptly at ten Vi appeared.

"Where's your maid?" asked Lewis. "You've simply got to have a maid
along for this sort of thing."

"You're wrong," said Vi. "It's just the sort of thing one doesn't have a
maid for. It's easier to trust two to keep quiet than to keep a maid
from vain imaginings. And--it's a lot less expensive."

"Well," said Lewis, "where's your costume?"

"Here," said Vi, "in my recticule."

They laughed. Ten minutes later Vi appeared in her filmy costume.
Lewis's face no longer smiled. He was sitting on a bench at the fart