Valerie was busy--exceedingly busy arranging matters, in view of the
great change impending.
She began by balancing her check book, comparing stubs with cancelled
checks, adding and verifying sums total, filing away paid bills and
paying the remainder--a financial operation which did not require much
time, but to which she applied herself with all the seriousness of a
wealthy man hunting through a check book which will not balance, for a
few pennies that ought to be his.
For since she had any accounts at all to keep, she had kept them with
method and determination. Her genius for order was inherent: even when
she possessed nothing except the clothes she wore, she had always kept
them in perfect condition. And now that her popularity in business gave
her a bank balance and permitted some of the intimate little luxuries
that make for a woman's self-respect, a perfect passion for order and
method possessed her.
The tiny bedroom which she inhabited, and the adjoining bathroom, were
always immaculate. Every week she made an inventory of her few but
pretty garments, added or subtracted from her memorandum, went over her
laundry list, noted and laid aside whatever clothing needed repairs.
Once a week, too, she inspected her hats, foot-wear, furs; dusted the
three rows of books, emptied and cleaned the globe in which a solitary
goldfish swam, goggling his eyes in the sunshine, and scrubbed the
porcelain perching pole on which her parrot sat all day in the bathroom
window making limited observations in French, Spanish, and English, and
splitting red peppers and dried watermelon seeds with his heavy curved
beak. He was a gorgeous bird, with crimson and turquoise blue on him,
and a capacity for deviltry restrained only by a silver anklet and
chain, gifts from Querida, as was also the parrot.
So Valerie, in view of the great change impending, began to put her
earthly house in order--without any particular reason, however, because
the great change would not affect her quarters or her living in them.
Nor could she afford to permit it to interfere with her business career
for which perfect independence was necessary.
She had had it out with Neville one stormy afternoon in January,
stopping in for tea after posing for John Burleson's Psyche fountain
ordered by Penrhyn Cardemon. She had demanded from Neville acquiescence
in her perfect freedom of action, absolute independence; had modestly
requested non-interference in her business affairs and the liberty to
support herself.
"There is no other way, Louis," she explained very sweetly. "I do not
think I am going to lose any self-respect in giving myself to you--but
there would not be one shred of it left to cover me if I were not as
free as you are to make the world pay me fairly for what I give it."
And, another time, she had said to him: "It is better not to tell me all
about your personal, private, and financial affairs--better that I do
not tell you about mine. Is it necessary to burst into financial and
trivial confidences when one is in love?
"I have an idea that that is what spoils most marriages. To me there is
a certain respectability in reticence when a girl is very much in love.
I would no more open my personal and private archives in all their
petty disorder to your inspection than I would let you see me
dress--even if we had been married for hundreds of years."
[Illustration: "She began by balancing her check book."]
And still, on another occasion, when he had fought her for hours in an
obstinate determination to make her say she would marry him--and when,
beaten, chagrined, baffled, he had lost his temper, she won him back
with her child-like candour and self-control.
"Your logic," he said, "is unbaked, unmature, unfledged. It's
squab-logic, I tell you, Valerie; and it is not very easy for me to
listen to it."
"I'm afraid that I am not destined to be entirely easy for you, dear,
even with love as the only tie with which to bind you. The arbitrary
laws of a false civilisation are going to impose on you what you think
are duties and obligations to me and to yourself--until I explain them
away. You must come to me in your perplexity, Louis, and give me a
chance to remind you of the basic and proven proposition that a girl is
born into this world as free as any man, and as responsible to herself
and to others; and that her title to her own individuality and
independence--her liberty of mind, her freedom to give and accept, her
capability of taking care of herself, her divine right of considering,
re-considering, of meeting the world unafraid--is what really ought to
make her lovable."
He had answered: "What rotten books have you been reading?" And it
annoyed her, particularly when he had asked her whether she expected to
overturn, with the squab-logic of twenty years, the formalisms of a
civilisation several thousand years old. He had added:
"The runways of wild animals became Indian paths; the Indian paths
became settlers' roads, and the roads, in time, city streets. But it was
the instinct of wild creatures that surveyed and laid out the present
highways of our reasoning civilisation. And I tell you, Valerie, that
the old ways are the best, for on them is founded every straight highway
of modern thought and custom."
She considered:
"Then there is only one way left--to see you no more."
He had thought so, too, infuriated at the idea; and they had passed a
very miserable and very stormy afternoon together, which resulted in her
crying silently on the way home; and in a sleepless night for two; and
in prolonged telephone conversation at daybreak. But it all ended with a
ring at his door-bell, a girl in furs all flecked with snow, springing
swiftly into his studio; a moment's hesitation--then the girl and her
furs in his arms, her cold pink cheeks against his face--a brief moment
of utter happiness--for she was on her way to business--a swift, silent
caress, then eyes searching eyes in silent promise--in reluctant
farewell for an hour or two.
But it left him to face the problems of the day with a new sense of
helplessness--the first confused sensation that hers was the stronger
nature, the dominant personality--although he did not definitely
understand this.
Because, how could he understand it of a young girl so soft, so
yielding, so sweet, so shy and silent in the imminence of passion when
her consenting lips trembled and grew fragrant in half-awakened response
to his.
How could he believe it--conscious of what he had made of himself
through sheer will and persistent? How could he credit it--remembering
what he already stood for in the world, where he stood, how he had
arrived by the rigid road of self-denial; how he had mounted, steadily,
undismayed, unperturbed, undeterred by the clamour of envy, of
hostility, unseduced by the honey of flattery?
Upright, calm, self-confident, he had forged on straight ahead,
following nobody--battled steadily along the upward path until--out of
the void, suddenly he had come up against a blank wall.
That wall which had halted, perplexed, troubled, dismayed, terrified him
because he was beginning to believe it to be the boundary which marked
his own limitations, suddenly had become a transparent barrier through
which he could see. And what he saw on the other side was an endless
vista leading into infinity. But the path was guarded; Love stood
sentinel there. And that was what he saw ahead of him now, and he knew
that he might pass on if Love willed it--and that he would never care to
pass on alone. But that he _could_ not go forward, ignoring Love,
neither occurred to him nor would he have believed it if it had. Yet, at
times, an indefinable unease possessed him as though some occult
struggle was impending for which he was unprepared.
That struggle had already begun, but he did not know it.
On the contrary all his latent strength and brilliancy had revived,
exquisitely virile; and the new canvas on which he began now to work
blossomed swiftly into magnificent florescence.
A superb riot of colour bewitched the entire composition; never had his
brushes swept with such sun-tipped fluency, never had the fresh
splendour of his hues and tones approached so closely to convincing
himself in the hours of fatigue and coldly sober reaction from the
auto-intoxication of his own facility.
That auto-intoxication had always left his mind and his eye steady and
watchful, although drugged--like the calm judgment of the intoxicated
opportunist at the steering wheel of a racing motor. And a race once run
and ended, a deliberate consideration of results usually justified the
pleasure of the pace.
Yet that mysterious something which some said he lacked, had not yet
appeared. That _something_, according to many, was an elusive quality
born of a sympathy for human suffering--an indefinable and delicate bond
between the artist and his world--between a master who has suffered, and
all humanity who understands.
The world seemed to recognise this subtle bond between themselves and
Querida's pictures. Yet in the pictures there was never any sadness. Had
Querida ever suffered? Was it in that olive-skinned, soft-voiced young
man to suffer?--a man apparently all grace and unruffled surface and
gentle charm--a man whose placid brow remained smooth and untroubled by
any line of perplexity or of sorrow.
And as Neville studied his own canvas coolly, logically, with an
impersonal scrutiny that almost amounted to hostility, he wondered what
it was in Querida's work that still remained absent in his. He felt its
absence but he could not define what it was that was absent, could not
discover the nature of it. He really began to feel the lack of it in his
work, but he searched his canvas and his own heart in vain for any
vacuum unfilled.
[Illustration: "He stood before it, searching in it for any hint of
that elusive and mysterious _something_"]
Then, too, had he himself not suffered? What had that restless,
miserable winter meant, if it had not meant sorrow? He _had_
suffered--blindly it is true until the truth of his love for Valerie had
suddenly confronted him. Yet that restless pain--and the intense emotion
of their awakening--all the doubts, all the anxieties--the wonder and
happiness and sadness in the imminence of that strange future impending
for them both--had altered nothing in his work--brought into it no new
quality--unless, as he thought, it had intensified to a dazzling
brilliancy the same qualities which already had made his work famous.
"It's all talk," he said to himself--"it's sentimental jargon, precious
twaddle--all this mysterious babble about occult quality and humanity
and sympathy. If José Querida has the capacity of a chipmunk for mental
agony, I've lost my bet that he hasn't."
And all the time he was conscious that there _was_ something about
Querida's work which made that work great; and that it was not in his
own work, and that his own work was not great, and never had been great.
"But it will be," he said rather grimly to himself one day, turning with
a shrug from his amazing canvas and pulling the unfinished portrait of
Valerie into the cold north light.
For a long while he stood before it, searching in it for any hint of
that elusive and mysterious _something_, and found none.
Moreover there was in the painting of this picture a certain candour
amounting to stupidity--an uncertainty--a naïve, groping sort of brush
work. It seemed to be technically, almost deliberately, muddled.
There was a tentative timidity about it that surprised his own technical
assurance--almost moved him to contempt.
What had he been trying to do? For what had he been searching in those
slow, laborious, almost painful brush strokes--in that clumsy groping
for values, in the painstaking reticence, the joyless and mathematical
establishment of a sombre and uninspiring key, in the patient plotting
of simpler planes where space and quiet reigned unaccented?
"Lord!" he said, biting his lip. "I've been stung by the microbe of the
precious! I'll be talking Art next with both thumbs and a Vandyke
beard."
Still, through his self-disgust, a sensation of respect for the canvas
at which he was scowling, persisted. Nor could he account for the
perfectly unwelcome and involuntary idea that there was, about the
half-finished portrait, something almost dignified in the very candour
of its painting.
John Burleson came striding in while he was still examining it. He
usually came about tea time, and the door was left open after five
o'clock.
"O-ho!" he said in his big, unhumorous voice, "what in hell and the name
of Jimmy Whistler have we here?"
"Mud," said Neville, shortly--"like Mr. Whistler's."
"He was muddy--sometimes," said John, seriously, "but _you_ never were
until this."
"Oh, I know it, Johnny. Something infected me. I merely tried to do what
isn't in me. And this is the result. When a man decides he has a
mission, you can never tell what fool thing he'll be guilty of."
"It's Valerie West, isn't it?" demanded John, bluntly.
"She won't admire you for finding any resemblance," said Neville,
laughing.
The big sculptor rubbed his big nose reflectively.
"After all," he said, "what is so bad about it, Kelly?"
"Oh, everything."
"No, it isn't. There's something about it that's--different--and
interesting--"
"Oh, shut up, John, and fix yourself a drink--"
"Kelly, I'm telling you that it isn't bad--that there's something
terribly solid and sincere about this beginning--"
He looked around with a bovine grunt as Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan came
mincing in: "I say, you would-be funny fellows!--come over and tell
Kelly Neville that he's got a pretty good thing here if he only has the
brains to develop it!"
Neville lighted a cigarette and looked on cynically as Ogilvy and Annan
joined Burleson on tiptoe, affecting exaggerated curiosity.
"I think it's rotten," said Annan, after a moment's scrutiny; "don't
you, Sam?"
Ogilvy, fists thrust deep into the pockets of his painting jacket, eyed
the canvas in silence.
"_Don't_ you?" repeated Annan. "Or is it a masterpiece beyond my vulgar
ken?"
"Well--no. Kelly was evidently trying to get at something new--work out
some serious idea. No, I don't think it's rotten at all. I rather like
it."
"It looks too much like her; that's why it's rotten," said Annan. "Thank
God I've a gift for making pretty women out of my feminine clients,
otherwise I'd starve. Kelly, you haven't made Valerie pretty enough.
That's the trouble. Besides, it's muddy in spots. Her gown needs
dry-cleaning. But my chief criticism is the terrible resemblance to the
original."
"Ah-h, what are you talking about!" growled Burleson; "did you ever see
a prettier girl than Valerie West?"
Ogilvy said slowly: "She's pretty--to look at in real life. But,
somehow, Kelly has managed here to paint her more exactly than we have
really ever noticed her. That's Valerie's face and figure all right; and
it's more--it reflects what is going on inside her head--all the
unbaked, unassimilated ideas of immaturity whirring in a sequence which
resembles logic to the young, but isn't."
"What do you mean by such bally stuff?" demanded Burleson, bluntly.
Annan laughed, but Ogilvy said seriously:
"I mean that Kelly has painted something interesting. It's a fascinating
head--all soft hair and delicious curves, and the charming indecision of
immature contours which ought some day to fall into a nobler
firmness.... It's as interesting as a satire, I tell you. Look at that
perfectly good mouth and its delicate sensitive decision with a hint of
puritanical primness in the upper lip--and the full, sensuous under lip
mocking the upper and giving the lie to the child's eyes which are still
wide with the wonder of men and things. And there's something of an
adolescent's mystery in the eyes, too--a hint of languor where the bloom
of the cheek touches the lower lid--and those smooth, cool, little
hands, scarcely seen in the shadow--did you ever see more purity and
innocence--more character and the lack of it--painted into a pair of
hands since Van Dyck and Whistler died?"
Neville, astonished, stood looking incredulously at the canvas around
which the others had gathered.
Burleson said: "There's something honest and solid about it, anyway;
hanged if there isn't."
"Like a hen," suggested Ogilvy, absently.
"Like a hen?" repeated Burleson. "What in hell has a hen got to do with
the subject?"
"Like _you_, then, John," said Annan, "honest, solid, but totally
unacquainted with the finer phases of contemporary humour--"
"I'm as humorous as anybody!" roared Burleson.
"Sure you are, John--just as humorously contemporaneous as anybody of
our anachronistic era," said Ogilvy, soothingly. "You're right; there's
nothing funny about a hen."
"And here's a highball for you, John," said Neville, concocting a huge
one on the sideboard.
"And here are two charming ladies for you, John," added Sam, as Valerie
and Rita Tevis entered the open door and mockingly curtsied to the
company.
"We've dissected _your_ character," observed Annan to Valerie, pointing
to her portrait. "We know all about you now; Sam was the professor who
lectured on you, but you can blame Kelly for turning on the
searchlight."
"What search-light?" she asked, pivotting from Neville's greeting,
letting her gloved hand linger in his for just a second longer than
convention required.
"Harry means that portrait of you I started last year," said Neville,
vexed. "He pretends to find it full of psychological subtleties."
"Do you?" inquired Valerie. "Have you discovered anything horrid in my
character?"
"I haven't finished looking for the character yet," said Sam with an
impudent grin. "When I find it I'll investigate it."
"Sam! Come here!"
He came carefully, wincing when she took him by the generous lobes of
both ears.
"Now _what_ did you say?"
"Help!" he murmured, contritely; "will no kind wayfarer aid me?"
"Answer me!"
"I only said you were beautifully decorative but intellectually
impulsive--"
"No, answer me, Sam!"
"Ouch! _I_ said you had a pair of baby eyes and an obstinate mouth and
an immature mind that came to, conclusions before facts were properly
assimilated. In other words I intimated that you were afflicted with
incurable femininity and extreme youth," he added with satisfaction,
"and if you tweak my ears again I'll kiss you!"
She let him go with a last disdainful tweak, gracefully escaping his
charge and taking refuge behind Neville who was mixing another highball
for Annan.
"This is a dignified episode," observed Neville, threatening Ogilvy with
the siphon.
"Help me make tea, Sam," coaxed Valerie. "Bring out the table; that's an
exceedingly nice boy. Rita, you'll have tea, too, won't you, dear?"
Unconsciously she had come to assume the role of hostess in Neville's
studio, even among those who had been familiar there long before Neville
ever heard of her.
Perfectly unaware herself of her instinctive attitude, other people
noticed it. For the world is sharp-eyed, and its attitude is always
alert, ears pricked forward even when its tail wags good-naturedly.
Ogilvy watched her curiously as she took her seat at the tea table.
Then he glanced at Neville; but could not make up his mind.
It would be funny if there was anything between Valerie and
Neville--anything more than there ever had been between the girl and
dozens of her men friends. For Ogilvy never allowed himself to make any
mistake concerning the informality and freedom of Valerie West in her
intimacies with men of his kind. She was a born flirt, a coquette,
daring, even indiscreet; but that ended it; and he knew it; and so did
every man with whom she came in contact.
Yet--and he looked again at her and then at Neville--there seemed to him
to be, lately, something a little different in the attitudes of these
two toward each other--nothing that he could name--but it preoccupied
him sometimes.
There was a little good-natured malice in Ogilvy; some masculine
curiosity, too. Looking from Valerie to Neville, he said very
innocently:
"Kelly, you know that peachy dream with whom you cut up so shamefully on
New-year's night? Well, she asked me for your telephone number--"
"What are you talking about?" demanded Neville, annoyed.
"Why, I'm talking about Mazie," said Sam, pleasantly. "You remember
Mazie Gray? And how crazy you and she became about each other?"
Valerie, who was pouring tea, remained amiably unconcerned; and Ogilvy
obtained no satisfaction from her; but Neville's scowl was so hearty and
unfeigned that a glimpse of his visage sent Annan into fits of laughter.
To relieve which he ran across the floor, like a huge spider. Then
Valerie leisurely lifted her tranquil eyes and her eyebrows, too, a
trifle.
"Why such unseemly contortions, Harry?" she inquired.
"Sam tormenting Kelly to stir _you_ up! He's got a theory that you and
Kelly are mutually infatuated."
"What a delightful theory, Sam," said Valerie, smiling so sincerely at
Ogilvy that he made up his mind there wasn't anything in it. But the
next moment, catching sight of Neville's furious face, his opinion
wavered.
Valerie said laughingly to Rita: "They'll never grow up, these two--"
nodding her head toward Ogilvy and Annan. And to Neville carelessly--too
carelessly: "Will you have a little more tea, Kelly dear?"
Her attitude was amiable and composed; her voice clear and
unembarrassed. There may have been a trifle more colour in her cheeks;
but what preoccupied Rita was in her eyes--a fleeting glimpse of
something that suddenly concentrated all of Rita's attention upon the
girl across the table.
For a full minute she sat looking at Valerie who seemed pleasantly
unconscious of her inspection; then almost stealthily she shifted her
gaze to Neville.
Gladys and her kitten came purring around in quest of cream; Rita
gathered them into her arms and caressed them and fed them bits of
cassava and crumbs of cake. She was unusually silent that afternoon.
John Burleson tried to interest her with heavy information of various
kinds, but she only smiled absently at that worthy man. Sam Ogilvy and
Harry Annan attempted to goad her into one of those lively exchanges of
banter in which Rita was entirely capable of taking care of herself.
But her smile was spiritless and non-combative; and finally they let her
alone and concentrated their torment upon Valerie, who endured it with
equanimity and dangerously sparkling eyes, and an occasional lightening
retort which kept those young men busy, especially when the epigram was
in Latin--which hurt their feelings.
She had just furnished them with a sample of this classical food for
thought when the door-bell rang and Neville looked up in astonishment to
see José Querida come in.
"Hello," he said, springing up with friendly hand outstretched--"this is
exceedingly good of you, Querida. You have not been here in a very long
while."
Querida's smile showed his teeth; he bowed to Valerie and to Rita, bowed
to the men in turn, and smiled on Neville.
"In excuse I must plead work, my dear fellow--a poor plea and poorer
excuse for the pleasure lost in seeing you--" he nodded to the
others--"and in missing many agreeable little gatherings--similar to
this, I fancy?"
There was a rising inflection to his voice which made the end of his
little speech terminate as a question; and he looked to Valerie for his
answer.
"Yes," she said, "we usually have tea in Kelly's studio. And you may
have some now, if you wish, José."
He nodded his thanks and placed his chair beside hers.
The conversation had become general; Rita woke up, dumped the cats out
of her lap, and made a few viciously verbal passes at Ogilvy. Burleson,
earnest and most worthy, engaged Querida's attention for a while; but
that intellectually lithe young man evaded the ponderously impending
dispute with suave skill, and his gentle smile lingered longer on
Valerie than on anybody else. Several times, with an adroit carelessness
that seemed to be purposeless, he contrived to draw Valerie out of the
general level of conversation by merely lowering his voice; but she
seemed to understand the invitation; and, answering him as carelessly as
he spoke, keyed her replies in harmony with the chatter going on around
them.
He drank his tea smilingly; listened to the others; bore his part
modestly; and at intervals his handsome eyes wandered about the studio,
reverting frequently to the great canvas overhead.
"You know," he said to Neville, showing the eternal edge of teeth under
his crisp black beard--"that composition of yours is simply superb. I am
all for it, Neville."
"I'm glad you are," nodded Neville, pleasantly, "but it hasn't yet
developed into what I hoped it might." His eyes swerved toward Valerie;
their glances encountered casually and passed on. Only Rita saw the
girl's breath quicken for an instant--saw the scarcely perceptible
quiver of Neville's mouth where the smile twitched at his lip for its
liberty to tell the whole world that he was in love. But their faces
were placid, their expressions well schooled; Querida's half-veiled eyes
appeared to notice nothing and for a while he remained smilingly silent.
Later, by accident, he caught sight of Valerie's portrait; he turned
sharply in his chair and looked full at the canvas.
Nobody spoke for a moment; Neville, who was passing Valerie, felt the
slightest contact as the velvet of her fingers brushed across his.
Then Querida rose and walked over to the portrait and stood before it in
silence, biting at his vivid under lip and at the crisp hairs of his
beard that framed it.
Without knowing why, Neville began to feel that Querida was finding in
that half-finished work something that disturbed him; and that he was
not going to acknowledge what it was that he saw there, whether of good
or of the contrary.
Nobody spoke and Querida said nothing.
A mild hope entered Neville's mind that the _something_, which had never
been in any work of his, might perhaps lie latent in that canvas--that
Querida was discovering it--without a pleasure--but with a sensitive
clairvoyance which was already warning him of a new banner in the
distance, a new trumpet-call from the barriers, another lance in the
lists where he, Querida, had ridden so long unchallenged and supreme.
Within him he felt a sudden and secret excitement that he never before
had known--a conviction that the unexpressed hostility of Querida's
silence was the truest tribute ever paid him--the tribute that at last
was arousing hope from its apathy, and setting spurs to his courage.
Rita, watching Querida, yawned and concealed the indiscretion with her
hand and a taunting word directed at Ogilvy, who retorted in kind. And
general conversation began again.
Querida turned toward Neville, caught his eye, and shrugged:
"That portrait is scarcely in your happiest manner, is it?" he asked
with a grimace. "For me--" he touched his breast with long pale
fingers--"I adore your gayer vein--your colour, clarity--the glamour of
splendour that you alone can cast over such works as that--" He waved
his hand upward toward the high canvas looming above. And he smiled at
Neville and seated himself beside Valerie.
A portfolio of new mezzotints attracted Annan; others gathered around to
examine Neville's treasures; the tea table was deserted for a while
except by Querida and Valerie. Then he deliberately dropped his voice:
"Will you give me another cup of tea, Valerie? And let me talk to you?"
"With pleasure." She set about preparing it.
"I have not seen you for some time," he said in the same caressing
undertone.
"You haven't required me, José."
"Must it be entirely a matter of business between us?"
"Why, of course," she said in cool surprise. "You know perfectly well
how busy I am--and must be."
"You are sometimes busy--pouring tea, here."
"But it is after hours."
"Yet, after hours, you no longer drop in to chat with me."
"Why, yes, I do--"
"Pardon. Not since--the new year began.... Will you permit me a word?"
She inclined her head with undisturbed composure; he went on:
"I have asked you to many theatres, invited you to dine with me, to go
with me to many, many places. And, it appeared, that you had always
other engagements.... Have I offended you?"
"Of course not. You know I like you immensely--"
"Immensely," he repeated with a smile. "Once there was more of sentiment
in your response, Valerie. There is little sentiment in immensity."
She flushed: "I _was_ spoons on you," she said, candidly. "I was silly
with you--and very indiscreet.... But I'd rather not recall that--"
"_I_ can not choose but recall it!"
"Nice men forget such things," she said, hastily.
"How can you speak that way about it?"
"Because I _think_ that way, José," she said, looking up at him; but she
saw no answering smile in his face, and little colour in it; and she
remained unquietly conscious of his gaze.
"I will not talk to you if you begin to look at me like that," she began
under her breath; "I don't care for it--"
"Can I help it--remembering--"
"You have nothing to remember except my pardon," she interrupted hotly.
"Your pardon--for showing that I cared for you?"
"My pardon for your losing your head."
"We were absolutely frank with one another--"
"I do not understand that you are the sort of man a girl can not be
frank with. We imprudently exchanged a few views on life. You--"
"Many," he said--"and particularly views on marriage."
She said, steadily: "I told you that I cared at heart nothing at all for
ceremony and form. You said the same. But you misunderstood me. What
was there in that silly conversation significant to you or to me other
than an impersonal interest in hearing ideas expressed?"
"You knew I was in love with you."
"I did _not_!" she said, sharply.
"You let me touch your hands--kiss you, once--"
"And you behaved like a madman--and frightened me nearly to death! Had
you better recall that night, José? I was generous about it; I was even
a little sorry for you. And I forgave you."
"Forgave me my loving you?"
"You don't know what love is," she said, reddening.
"Do you, Valerie?"
She sat flushed and silent, looking fixedly at the cups and saucers
before her.
"_Do_ you?" he repeated in a curious voice. And there seemed to be
something of terror in it, for she looked up, startled, to meet his
long, handsome eyes looking at her out of a colourless visage.
"José," she said, "what in the world possesses you to speak to me this
way? Have you any right to assume this attitude--merely because I
flirted with you as harmlessly--or meant it harmlessly--"
She glanced involuntarily across the studio where the others had
gathered over the new collection of mezzotints, and at her glance
Neville raised his head and smiled at her, and encountered Querida's
expressionless gaze.
For a moment Querida turned his head away, and Valerie saw that his face
was pale and sinister.
"José," she said, "are you insane to take our innocent affair so
seriously? What in the world has come over you? We have been such
excellent friends. You have been just as nice as you could be, so gay
and inconsequential, so witty, so jolly, such good company!--and now,
suddenly, out of a perfectly clear sky your wrath strikes me like
lightning!"
"My anger is like that."
"José!" she exclaimed, incredulously.
He showed the edge of perfect teeth again, but she was not sure that he
was smiling. Then he laughed gently.
"Oh," she said in relief--"you really startled me."
"I won't do it again, Valerie." She looked at him, still uncertain,
fascinated by her uncertainty.
The colour--as much as he ever had--returned to his face; he reached
over for a cigarette, lighted it, smiled at her charmingly.
"I was just lonely without you," he said. "Like an unreasonable child I
brooded over it and--" he shrugged, "it suddenly went to my head. Will
_you_ forgive my bad temper?"
"Yes--I will. Only I never knew _you_ had a temper. It--astonishes me."
He said nothing, smilingly.
"Of course," she went on, still flushed, "I knew you were
impulsive--hot-headed--but I know you like me--"
"I was crazily in love with you," he said, lightly; "and when you let me
touch you--"
"Oh, I won't ever again, José!" she exclaimed, half-fearfully; "I
supposed you understood that sentiment could be a perfectly meaningless
and harmless thing--merely a silly moment--a foolish interlude in a
sober friendship.... And I _liked_ you, José--"
[Illustration: "'I shall have need of friends,' she said half to
herself."]
"Can you still like me?"
"Y-yes. Why, of course--if you'll let me."
"Shall we be the same excellent friends, Valerie? And all this ill
temper of mine will be forgotten?"
"I'll try.... Yes, why not? I _do_ like you, and I admire you
tremendously."
His eyes rested on her a moment; he inhaled a deep breath from his
cigarette, expelled it, nodded.
"I'll try to win back all your friendship for me," he said, pleasantly.
"That will be easy. I want you to like me. I want to be able to like
you.... I shall have need of friends," she said half to herself, and
looked across at Neville with a face tranquil, almost expressionless
save for the sensitive beauty of the mouth.
After a moment Querida, too, lifted his head and gazed deliberately at
Neville. Then very quietly:
"Are you dining alone this evening?"
"No."
"Oh. Perhaps to-morrow evening, then--"
"I'm afraid not, José."
He smiled: "Not dining alone ever again?"
"Not--for the present."
"I see."
"There is nothing to see," she said calmly. But his smile seemed now so
genuine that it disarmed her; and she blushed when he said:
"Am I to wish you happiness, Valerie? Is _that_ the trouble?"
"Certainly. Please wish it for me always--as I do for you--and for
everybody."
But he continued to laugh, and the colour in her face persisted,
annoying her intensely.
"Nevertheless," he said, "I do not believe you can be hopelessly in
love."
"What ever put such an idea into that cynical head of yours?"
"Chance," he said. "But you are not irrevocably in love. You are
ignorant of what love can really mean. Only he who understands it--and
who has suffered through it--can ever teach you. And you will never be
satisfied until he does."'
"Are you _very_ wise concerning love, José?" she asked, laughing.
[Illustration: "'Don't do it, Valerie!'"]
"Perhaps. You will desire to be, too, some day. A good school, an
accomplished scholar."
"And the schoolmaster? Oh! José!"
They both were laughing now--he with apparent pleasure in her coquetry
and animation, she still a little confused and instinctively on her
guard.
Rita came strolling over, a tiny cigarette balanced between her slender
fingers:
"Stop flirting, José," she said; "it's too near dinner time. Valerie,
child, I'm dining with the unspeakable John again. It's a horrid habit.
Can't you prescribe for me? José, what are you doing this evening?"
"Penance," he said; "I'm dining with my family."
"Penance," she repeated with a singular look--"well--that's one way of
regarding the pleasure of having any family to dine with--isn't it,
Valerie?"
"José didn't mean it that way."
Rita blew a ring from her cigarette's glimmering end.
"Will you be at home this evening, Valerie?"
"Y-yes ... rather late."
"Too late to see me?"
"No, you dear girl. Come at eleven, anyway. And if I'm a little late
you'll forgive me, won't you?"
"No, I won't," said Rita, crossly. "You and I are business women,
anyway, and eleven is too late for week days. I'll wait until I can see
you, sometime--"
"Was it anything important, dear?"
"Not to me."
Querida rose, took his leave of Valerie and Rita, went over and made his
adieux to his host and the others. When he had gone Rita, standing alone
with Valerie beside the tea table, said in a low voice:
"Don't do it, Valerie!"
"Do--what?" asked the girl in astonishment.
"Fall in love."
[Illustration: "Ogilvy stood looking sentimentally at the two young
girls."]
Valerie laughed.
"Do you mean with Querida?"
"No."
"Then--what _do_ you mean?"
"You're on the edge of doing it, child. It isn't wise. It won't do for
us.... I know--I _know_, Valerie, more than you know about--love. Listen
to me. Don't! Go away--go somewhere; drop everything and go, if you've
any sense left. I'll go with you if you will let me.... I'll do anything
for you, dear. Only listen to me before it's too late; keep your
self-control; keep your mind clear on this one thing, that love is of no
use to us--no good to us. And if you think you suspect its presence in
your neighbourhood, get away from it; pick up your skirts and run,
Valerie.... You've plenty of time to come back and wonder what you ever
could have seen in the man to make you believe you could fall in love
with him."
Ogilvy, strolling up, stood looking sentimentally at the two young
girls.
"A--perfect--pair--of precious--priceless--peaches," he said; "I'd love
to be a Turk with an Oriental smirk and an ornamental dirk, and a
tendency to shirk when the others go to work; for the workers I can't
bear 'em and I'd rather run a harem--"
"No doubt," said Rita, coldly; "so you need not explain to me the rather
lively young lady I met in the corridor looking for studio number ten--"
"Rita! Zuleika! Star of my soul! Jewel of my turban! Do you entertain
suspicions--"
"Oh, _you_ probably did the entertaining--"
"I? Heaven! How I am misunderstood! John Burleson! Come over here and
tell this very charming young lady all about that somewhat conspicuous
vision from a local theatre who came floating into my studio by accident
while in joyous quest of you!"
But Annan only laughed, and Rita shrugged her disdain. But as she nodded
adieu to Valerie, the latter saw a pinched look in her face, and did not
understand it.