little pout. "I said 'Baa, baa, black sheep, have you
any wool?'"

"No, you didn't," returned Kendal as they laughed together.
"You said something about being like Cleopatra, a creature
of infinite variety, didn't you? About having a great
many disguises--" absently. "But--"

Kendal fell into the absorbed silence of his work again,
leaving the sentence unfinished. He looked up at her with
a long, close, almost intimate scrutiny, under which and
his careless words she blushed hotly.

"Then I hope you have chosen my most becoming disguise,"
she cried imperiously, jumping up. "Now, if you please,
I will see."

She stood beside the canvas with her eyes upon his face,
waiting for a sign from him. He, feeling, without knowing
definitely why, that a critical moment had come between
them, rose and stepped back a pace or two, involuntarily
pulling himself together to meet what she might say.
"Yes, you may look," he said, seeing that she would not
turn her head without his word; and waited.

Elfrida took three or four steps beyond the easel and
faced it. In the first instant of her gaze her face grew
radiant. "Ah," she said softly, "how unconscionably you
must hare flattered me! I can't be so pretty as that."

A look of relief shot across Kendal's face. "I'm glad
you like it," he said briefly. "It's a capital pose."

The first thing that could possibly be observed, about
the portrait was its almost dramatic loveliness. The head
was turned a little, and the eyes regarded something
distant, with a half wishful, half deprecating dreaminess.
The lips were plaintively courageous, and the line of
the lifted chin and throat helped the pathetic eyes and
annihilated the heaviness of the other features. It was
as if the face made an expressive effort to subdue a
vitality which might otherwise have been aggressive; but
while the full value of this effect of spiritual pose
was caught and rendered, Kendal had done his work in a
vibrant significant chord of color that strove for the
personal force beneath it and brought it out.

Elfrida dropped into the nearest chair, clasped her knees
in her hands, and bending forward, earnestly regarded
the canvas with a silence that presently became perceptible.
It seemed to Kendal at first, as he stood talking to her
of its technicalities, that she tested the worth of every
stroke; then he became aware that she was otherwise
occupied, and that she did not hear him. He paused and
stepped o