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

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

"Please. It's respectable," she insisted her agreeable, modulated voice.
"I had rather the reason for my coming here be business--whatever else
happens."

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

"Very," she said with a forced smile.

"Do you object to the manner in which he expressed his gratitude?"

She hung her head.

"No," she said.

After a while she raised her eyes, her head still lowered. He was
working, darkly absorbed as usual in the plastic mass under his fingers.

She watched him curiously, not his hands, now, but his lean, intent
face, striving to penetrate that masculine mask, trying to understand.
Varying and odd reflections and emotions possessed her in turn, and
passed--wonder, bewilderment at he