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“For Heaven’s sake–“

“But you don’t care!… Do you?”

He was silent; he stood looking at her in a stupid sort of way.

After a moment or two she rose, picked up her hat, went to the glass and pinned it on, then strolled slowly back, drawing on her gloves.

“It’s five o’clock, you know, Drene.”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Do you want me to-morrow?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“You are not offended?”

He did not answer. She came up to him and repeated the question in a childishly anxious voice that was a trifle too humble. And looking down into her eyes he saw a gleam of pure mischief in them.

“You little villain!” he said; and caught her wrists. “A lot you care whether I am offended!”

She looked away from him, turning her profile. Her expression was inscrutable. After a silence he dropped her wrists with a vague laugh.

“You should have let me alone,” he said.

“‘The woman tempted me,'” she repeated, still looking away from him. He said nothing.

“Good night,” she nodded, and turned toward the door.

He went with her, falling into step beside her. One arm slipped around her waist as they entered the hallway. They walked slowly to the door. He unlatched it, hesitated; she moved one foot forward, and he took a step at the same time which brought her across his path so closely that contact was unavoidable. And he kissed her.

“Oh,” she said. “So you are human after all! I often wondered.”

She looked up, trying to laugh, but could not seem to take it as coolly as she might have wished to.

“Not that a kiss is very important in these days,” she continued, “yet it might interest you to hear that a friend of yours rather fancies me. He wouldn’t like you to do it. But–” She lifted her blue eyes with faint malice–“What is a woman between friends?”

“Who is he?”

“Jack Graylock.”

Drene remained motionless.

“I haven’t encouraged him,” she said. “Perhaps that is why.”

“Why he fancies you?”

“Why he asked me to marry him. It was the only thing he had not asked.”

“He asked that?”

“After he realized it was the only way, I suppose,” she said coolly. Drene took her into his arms and kissed her deliberately on the mouth. Looking up at him she said: “After all, he is your friend, isn’t he?”

“A friend of many years. But, as you say, what is a woman between friends?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl. And, still clasped in his arms, she bent her head, thoughtfully, considering the question.

And as though she had come to some final conclusion, she raised her head, lifted her eyes slowly, and her lips, to the man whose arms enfolded her. It was her answer to his question, and her own.

When she had gone, he went back and stood again by the great window, watching the cote on a neighboring roof, where the pigeons were strutting and coquetting in the last rays of the western sun.

II

When she came again to the studio, she was different, subdued, evading, avoiding, smiling a little in her flushed diffidence at his gay ease of manner–or assumption of both ease and gaiety.

He was inclined to rally her, tease her, but her reticence was not all embarrassment. The lightest contact, the slightest caress from him, added a seriousness to her face, making it very lovely under its heightened color, and strangely childlike.

Model and master they would have remained no longer had it been for him to say, he desiring now to make it a favor and concession on her part to aid him professionally, she gravely insisting on professionalism as the basis of whatever entente might develop between them, as well as the only avowed excuse for her presence there alone with him.

“Please. It’s respectable,” she insisted her agreeable, modulated voice. “I had rather the reason for my coming here be business–whatever else happens.”

“What has happened,” he said, balancing a handful of wet clay in one hand and looking laughingly up at her, where she stood on the model-stand, “is that a pretty girl strolled in here one day and held up a mirror to a solemn ass who was stalking theatrically through life. That solemn ass is very grateful for the glimpse he had of himself. He behaved gratefully, didn’t he?”