"Of course not, but—"
"Well, then! There isn't one atom of it in my love for you, either. And I love you dearly—dearly! But I'm not selfish enough to marry you. Don't scowl and try to persuade me, Louis, I've a perfectly healthy mind of my own, and you know it—and it's absolutely clear on that subject. You must be satisfied with what I offer—every bit of love that is in me—" She hesitated, level eyed and self-possessed, considering him with the calm gaze of a young goddess:
"Dear," she went on, slowly, "let us end this marriage question once and for all. You can't take me out of my world into yours without suffering for it. Because your world is full of women of your own kind—mothers, sisters, relatives, friends…. And all your loyalty, all your tact, alltheirtact and philosophy, too, could not ease one moment in life for you if I were unwise enough to go with you into that world and let you try to force them to accept me."
"I tell you," he began, excitedly, "that they must accept—"
"Hush!" she smiled, placing her hand gently across his lips; "with all your man's experience you are only a man; but Iknowhow it is with women. I have no illusions, Louis. Even by your side, and with the well-meant kindness of your family to me, you would suffer; and I have not the courage to let you—even for love's sake."
"You are entirely mistaken—" he broke out; but she silenced him with a pretty gesture, intimate, appealing, a little proud.
"No, I am not mistaken, nor am I likely to deceive myself that any woman of your world could ever consider me of it—or could ever forgive you for taking me there. And that means spoiling life for you. And I will not!"
"Then they can eliminate me, also!" he said, impatiently.
"What logic! When I have triedsohard to make you understand that I will not accept any sacrifice from you!"
"It is no sacrifice for me to give up such a—"
"You say very foolish and very sweet things to me, Louis, but I could not love you enough to make up to you your unhappiness at seeing me in your world and not a part of it. Ah, the living ghosts of that world, Louis! YetIcould endure it for myself—a woman can endure anything when she loves; and find happiness, too—if only the man she loves is happy. But, for a man, the woman is never entirely sufficient. My position in your world would anger you, humiliate you, finally embitter you. And I could not live if sorrow came to you through me."
"You are bringing sorrow on me with every word—"
"No, dear. It hurts for a moment. Then wisdom will heal it. You do not believe what I say. But you must believe this, that through me you shall never know real unhappiness if I can prevent it."
"And I say to you, Valerie, that I want you for my wife. And if my family and my friends hesitate to receive you, it means severing my relations with them until they come to their senses—"
"Thatisexactlywhat I will not do to your life, Louis!Can'tyou understand? Is your mother less dear to you than was mine to me? I willnotbreak your heart! I will not humiliate either you or her; I will not ask her to endure—or any of your family—or one man or woman in that world where you belong…. I am too proud—and too merciful to you!"
"I am my own master!" he broke out, angrily—
"I am my own mistress—and incidentally yours," she added in a low voice.
"Valerie!"
"Am I not?" she asked, quietly.
"How can you say such a thing, child!"
"Because it is true—or will be. Won't it?" She lifted her clear eyes to his, unshrinking—deep brown wells of truth untroubled by the shallows of sham and pretence.
His face burned a deep red; she confronted him, slender, calm eyed, composed: "I am not the kind of woman who loves twice. I love you so dearly that I will not marry you. That is settled. I love you so deeply that I can be happy with you unmarried. And if this is true, is it not better for me to tell you? I ask nothing except love; I give all I have—myself."
She dropped her arms, palms outward, gazing serenely at him; then blushed vividly as he caught her to him in a close embrace, her delicate, full lips crushed to his.
"Dearest—dearest," he whispered, "you will change your ideas when you understand me better—"
"I can love you no more than I do. Could I love you more if I were your wife?"
"Yes, you wilful, silly child!"
She laughed, her lips still touching his. "I don't believe it, Louis. IknowI couldn't. Besides, there is no use thinking about it."
"Valerie, your logic and your ethics are terribly twisted—"
"Perhaps. All I know is that I love you. I'd rather talk of that—"
"Than talk of marrying me!"
"Yes, dear."
"But you'd make me so happy, so proud—"
"You darling! to say so. Think so always, Louis, because I promise to make you happy, anyway—"
He had encircled her waist with one arm, and they were slowly pacing the floor before the hearth, she with her charming young head bent, eyes downcast, measuring her steps to his.
She said, thoughtfully: "I have my own ideas concerning life. One of them is to go through it without giving pain to others. To me, the only real wickedness is the wilful infliction of unhappiness. That covers all guilt…. Other matters seem so trivial in comparison—I mean the forms and observances—the formalism of sect and creed…. To me they mean nothing—these petty laws designed to govern those who are willing to endure them. So I ignore them," she concluded, smilingly; and touched her lips to his hand.
"Do you include the marriage law?" he asked, curiously.
"In our case, yes…. I don't think it would do for everybody to ignore it."
"You think we may, safely?"
"Don't you, Louis?" she asked, flushing. "It leaves you free in your own world."
"How would it leave you?"
She looked up, smiling adorably at his thought of her:
"Free as I am now, dearest of men—free to be with you when you wish for me, free to relieve you of myself when you need that relief, free to come and go and earn my living as independently as you gain yours. It would leave me absolutely tranquil in body and mind…." She laid her flushed face against his. "Only my heart would remain fettered. And that is now inevitable."
He kissed her and drew her closer:
"You are so very, very wrong, dear. The girl who gives herself without benefit of clergy walks the earth with her lover in heavier chains than ever were forged at any earthly altar."
She bent her head thoughtfully; they paced the floor for a while in silence.
Presently she looked up: "You once said that love comes unasked and goes unbidden. Do vows at an altar help matters? Is divorce more decent because lawful? Is love more decent when it has been officially and clerically catalogued?"
"It is safer."
"For whom?"
"For the community."
"Perhaps." She considered as she timed her slow pace to his:
"But, Louis, I can't marry you and I love you! What am I to do? Live out life without you? Let you live out life without me? When my loving you would not harm you or me? When I love you dearly—more dearly, more deeply every minute? When life itself is—is beginning to be nothing in this world except you? What are we to do?"
And, as he made no answer:
"Dear," she said, hesitating a little, "I am perfectly unconscious of any guilt in loving you. I am glad I love you. I wish to be part of you before I die. I wish it more than anything in the world! How can an unselfish girl who loves you harm you or herself or the world if she gives herself to you—without asking benefit of clergy and the bureau of licenses?"
Standing before the fire, her head resting against his shoulder, they watched the fading embers for a while in silence. Then, irresistibly drawn by the same impulse, they turned toward one another, trembling:
"I'll marry you that way—if it's the only way," he said.
"It is the—only way."
She laid a soft hand in his; he bent and kissed it, then touched her mouth with his lips.
"Do you give yourself to me, Valerie?"
"Yes."
"From this moment?" he whispered.
Her face paled. She stood resting her cheek on his shoulder, eyes distrait thinking. Then, in a voice so low and tremulous he scarce could understand:
"Yes,now," she said, "I—give—myself."
He drew her closer: she relaxed in his embrace; her face, white as a flower, upturned to his, her dark eyes looking blindly into his.
There was no sound save the feathery rush of snow against the panes—the fall of an ember amid whitening ashes—a sigh—silence.
Twice logs fell from the andirons, showering the chimney with sparks; presently a little flame broke out amid the débris, lighting up the studio with a fitful radiance; and the single shadow cast by them wavered high on wall and ceiling.
His arms were around her; his lips rested on her face where it lay against his shoulder. The ruddy resurgence of firelight stole under the lashes on her cheeks, and her eyes slowly unclosed.
Standing there gathered close in his embrace, she turned her head and watched the flame growing brighter among the cinders. Thought, which had ceased when her lips met his in the first quick throb of passion, stirred vaguely, and awoke. And, far within her, somewhere in confused obscurity, her half-stunned senses began groping again toward reason.
"Louis!"
"Dearest one!"
"I ought to go. Will you take me home? It is morning—do you realise it?"
She lifted her head, cleared her eyes with one slender wrist, pushing back the disordered hair. Then gently disengaging herself from his arms, and still busy with her tumbled hair, she looked up at the dial of the ancient clock which glimmered red in the firelight.
"Morning—and a strange new year," she said aloud, to herself. She moved nearer to the clock, watching the stiff, jerking revolution of the second hand around its lesser dial.
Hearing him come forward behind her, she dropped her head back against him without turning.
"Do you see what Time is doing to us?—Time, the incurable, killing us by seconds, Louis—eating steadily into the New Year, devouring it hour by hour—the hours that we thought belonged to us." She added, musingly: "I wonder how many hours of the future remain for us."
He answered in a low voice:
"That is for you to decide."
"I know it," she murmured. She lifted one ringless hand and still without looking at him, pressed the third finger backward against his lips.
"So much for the betrothal," she said. "My ring-finger is consecrated."
"Will you not wear any ring?" he asked.
"No. Your kiss is enough."
"Yet—if we are—are—"
"Engaged?" she suggested, calmly. "Yes, call it that. I really am engaged to give myself to you—ex cathedra—extra muros."
"When?" he said under his breath.
"I don't know…. I must think. A girl who is going to break all conventions ought to have time to consider the consequences—" She smiled, faintly—"a little time to prepare herself for the—the great change…. I think we ought to remain engaged for a while—don't you?"
"Dearest!" he broke out, pleadingly, "the old wayisthe best way! I cannot bear to take you—to have you promise yourself without formality or sanction—"
"But I have already consented, Louis.Volenti non fit injuria," she added with a faint smile. "Voluntas non potest cogi—dearest—dearest of lovers! I love you dearly for what you offer me—I adore you for it. And—howlong do you think you ought to wait for me?"
She disengaged herself from his arm, walked slowly toward the tall old clock, turned her back to it and faced him with clear level eyes. After a moment she laughed lightly:
"Did ever an engaged gentleman face the prospect of impending happiness with such a long face as this suitor of mine is wearing!"
His voice broke in the protest wrung from his lips.
"Youmustbe my wife. I tell you! For God's sake marry me and let the future take care of itself!"
"You say so many sweet, confusing, and foolish things to me, Louis, that while you are saying them I almost believe them. And then that clear, pitiless reasoning power of mine awakens me; and I turn my gaze inward and read written on my heart that irrevocable law of mine, that no unhappiness shall ever come to you through me."
Her face, sweetly serious, brightened slowly to a smile.
"Now I am going home, monsieur—home to think over my mad and incredible promise to you … and I'm wondering whether I'll wake up scared to death…. Daylight is a chilly shower-bath. No doubt at all that I'll be pretty well frightened over what I've said and done to-night…. Louis, dear, you simplymusttake me home this very minute!" She came up to him, placed both hands on his shoulders, kissed him lightly, looked at him for a moment, humorously grave:
"Some day," she said, "a big comet will hit this law-ridden, man-regulated earth—or the earth will slip a cog and go wabbling out of its orbit into interstellar space and side-wipe another planet—or it will ultimately freeze up like the moon. And who will care thenhowValerie West loved Louis Neville?—or what letters in a forgotten language spelled 'wife' and what letters spelled 'mistress'? After all, I am not afraid of words. Nor do I fear what is in my heart. God reads it as I stand here; and he can see no selfishness in it. So if merely loving you all my life—and proving it—is an evil thing to do, I shall be punished; but I'm going to do it and find out what celestial justice really thinks about it."
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 hecouldnot 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. Thatsomething, 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 mysterioussomething"]
Then, too, had he himself not suffered? What had that restless, miserable winter meant, if it had not meant sorrow? Hehadsuffered—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 therewassomething 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 mysterioussomething, 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, "butyounever 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'tyou?" 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?"
"Likeyou, 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 dissectedyourcharacter," 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.
"Nowwhatdid 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!Isaid 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 onNew-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 rememberMazie 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 stiryouup! He's got a theory that you andKelly 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 thesomething, 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: "Iwasspoons on you," she said, candidly. "I was silly with you—and very indiscreet…. But I'd rather not recall that—"
"Ican not choose but recall it!"
"Nice men forget such things," she said, hastily.
"How can you speak that way about it?"
"Because Ithinkthat 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 didnot!" 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.
"Doyou?" 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. Willyouforgive my bad temper?"
"Yes—I will. Only I never knewyouhad 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 Ilikedyou, 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? Idolike 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 atNeville. 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? Isthatthe 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 youverywise 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—whatdoyou mean?"
"You're on the edge of doing it, child. It isn't wise. It won't do for us…. I know—Iknow, 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,youprobably 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.
The world, and his own family, had always been inclined to love Louis Neville, and had advanced no farther than the inclination. There were exceptions.
Archie Allaire, who hated him, discussing him floridly once with Querida at the Thumb-tack Club in the presence of a dozen others, characterised him as "one of those passively selfish snobs whose virtues are all negative and whose modesty is the mental complacency of an underdone capon."
He was sharply rebuked by Ogilvy, Annan, and Burleson; skilfully by Querida—so adroitly indeed that his amiable and smiling apology for the absent painter produced a curiously depressing effect upon Ogilvy and Annan, and even left John Burleson dully uncomfortable, although Allaire had been apparently well drubbed.
"All the same," said Allaire with a sneer to Querida after the others had departed, "Neville is really a most frightful snob. Like a busy bacillus surrounded by a glass tube full of prepared culture, he exists in his own intellectual exudations perfectly oblivious to the miseries and joys of the world around him. He hasn't time for anybody except himself."
Querida laughed: "What has Neville done to you, my friend?"
"To me?" repeated Allaire with a shrug. "Oh, nothing. It isn't that…. All the same when I had my exhibition at the Monson Galleries I went to him and said, 'See here, Neville, I've got some Shoe-trust and Button-trust women to pour tea for me. Now you know a lot of fashionable people and I want my tea-pourers to see them, and I want the papers to say that they've been to a private view of my exhibition.'
"He gave me one of those absent-treatment stares and said he'd tell all the really interesting people he knew; and the damnedest lot of scrubby, dowdy, down-at-the-heels tatterdemalions presented his card at my private view that you ever saw outside an artist's rathskeller, a lower Fifth Avenue reception, or a varnishing day! By God, I can go to the bread-line and get that sort of lookers myself—and I don't care whether his bunch came from Tenth Street Colonial stock or the Washington Square nobility or the landed gentry of Chelsea or from the purlieus of the Bronx, which is where they apparently belong! I can get that kind myself. I wanted automobiles and broughams and clothes, and I got one sea-going taxi, and the dirty end of the stick! And to cap the climax he strolled in himself with a girl whose face is familiar to everybody who looks at bath tubs in the back of the magazines—Valerie West! And I want to tell you I couldn't look my Shoe-trust tea-pourers in the face; and they're so mad that I haven't got an order out of them since."
Querida laughed till the tears stood in his big, velvety, almond-shaped eyes.
"Why didn't you come to me?" he said.
"Tell you the truth, Querida, I would have if I'd known then that you were painting portraits of half of upper Fifth Avenue. Besides," he added, naïvely, "that was before I began to see you in the grand tier at the opera every week."
"It was before I sat anywhere except in the gallery," said Querida with a humorous shrug. "Until this winter I knew nobody, either. And very often I washed my own handkerchiefs and dried them on the window pane. I had only fame for my laundress and notoriety for my butcher."
"Hey?" said Allaire, a trifle out of countenance.
"It is very true. It cost me so much to paint and frame my pictures that the prices they brought scarcely paid for models and materials." He added, pleasantly: "I have dined more often on a box of crackers and a jar of olives than at a table set with silver and spread with linen." He laughed without affectation or bitterness:
"It has been a long road, Allaire—from a stable-loft studio to—" he shrugged—"the 'Van Rypens' grand tier box, for example."
"How in God's name did you do it?" inquired Allaire, awed to the momentary obliteration of envy.
"I—painted," said Querida, smiling.
"Sure. I know that. I suppose it was the hellish row made over your canvases last winter that did the trick."
Querida's eyes were partly closed as though in retrospection. "Also," he said, softly, "I painted a very fashionable woman—for nothing—and to her entire satisfaction."
"That's therealthing, isn't it?"
"I'm afraid so…. Make two or three unlovely and unlovable old ladies lovely and lovable—on canvas—for nothing. Then society will let you slap its powdered and painted face—yes—permit you—other liberties—if only you will paint it and sign your canvases and ask them a wicked price for what you give them and—for what they yield to you."
Allaire's ruddy face grew ruddier; he grinned and passed a muscular hand over his thick, handsome, fox-tinted hair.
"I wish I could get next," he said with a hard glance at Querida. "I'd sting 'em."
"I would be very glad to introduce you to anybody I know," observed the other.
"Do you mean that?"
"Why not. A man who has waited as I have for opportunity understands what others feel who are still waiting."
"That's damn square of you, Querida."
"Oh, no, not square; just natural. The public table is big enough for everybody."
Allaire thought a moment, slowly caressing his foxy hair.
"After all," he said with a nervous snicker, "you needn't be afraid of anybody. Nobody can paint like you…. But I'd like to get a look in, Querida. I've got to make a little money in one way or another—" he added impudently—"and if I can't paint well enough to sting them, there's always the chance of marrying one of 'em."
Querida laughed: "Any man can always marry any woman. There's no trick in getting anywifeyou want."
"Sure," grinned Allaire; "a wife is a cinch; it's the front row that keeps good men guessing." He glanced at Querida, his gray-green eyes brimming with an imprudent malice he could not even now deny himself—"Also the backs of the magazines keep one guessing," he added, carelessly; "and I've the patience of a tom-cat, myself."
Querida's beautifully pencilled eyebrows were raised interrogatively.
"Oh, I'll admit that the little West girl kept me sitting on back fences until some other fellow threw a bottle at me," said Allaire with a disagreeable laugh. He had come as near as he dared to taunting Querida and, afraid at the last moment, had turned the edge of it on himself.
Querida lighted a cigarette and blew a whiff of smoke toward the ceiling.
"I've an idea," he said, lazily, "that somebody is trying to marry her."
"Forget it," observed Allaire in contempt. "She wouldn't stand for the sort who marry her kind. She'll land hard on her neck one of these days, and the one best bet will be some long-faced Botticelli with heavenly principles and the moral stability of a tumbler pigeon. Then there'll be hell to pay; buthewill get over it and she'll get aboard the toboggan. That's the way it ends, Querida."
Querida sipped his coffee and glanced out of the club window. From the window he could see the roof of the studio building where Neville lived. And he wondered how far Valerie was from that building at the present moment, wondered, and sipped his coffee.
He was a man whose career had been builded upon perseverance. He had begun life by slaying every doubt. And his had been a bitter life; but he had suffered smilingly; the sordid struggle along the edges of starvation had hardened nothing of his heart.
Sensitive, sympathetic, ardent, proud, and ambitious with the quiet certainty of a man predestined, he had a woman's capacity for patience, for suffering, and for concealment, but not for mercy. And he cared passionately for love as he did for beauty—had succumbed to both in spirit oftener than in the caprice of some inconsequential amourette.
But never, until he came to know Valerie West, had a living woman meant anything vital to his happiness. Yet, what she aroused in him was that part of his nature to which he himself was a stranger—a restless, sensuous side which her very isolation and exposure to danger seemed to excite the more until desire to control her, to drive others away, to subdue, master, mould her, make her his own, obsessed him. And he had tried it and failed; and had drawn aside, fiercely, still watching and determined.
Some day he meant to marry properly. He had never doubted his ability to do so even in the sordid days. But there was no hurry, and life was young, and so was Valerie West—young enough, beautiful enough to bridge the years with him until his ultimate destiny awaited him.