ed with--and rather likes it; and is inclined to let
herself go a little.... I don't want to.... And at times I've done
it.... Sam Ogilvy nearly kissed me, which really doesn't count--does it?
But I let Harry Annan do it, once.... If I'm weak enough to drift into
such silliness I'd better find a safeguard. I've been
thinking--thinking--that it really does originate in a sort of foolish
loneliness ...not in anything worse. So I thought I'd have a thorough
talk with you about it. I'm twenty-one--with all my experience of life
and of men crowded into a single winter and spring. I have as friends
only the few people I have met through you. I have nobody to see unless
I see them--nowhere to go unless I go where they ask me.... So I thought
I'd ask you to let me depend a little on you, sometimes--as a refuge
from isolation and morbid thinking now and then. And from other
mischief--for which I apparently have a capacity--to judge by what I've
done--and what I've let men do already."

She laid her hand lightly on his arm in sudden and impulsive confidence:

"That's my 'thorough talk.' I haven't any one else to tell it to. And
I've told you the worst." She smiled at him adorably: "And now I am
ready to go out with you," she said,--"go anywhere in the world with
you, Kelly. And I am going to be perfectly happy--if you are."

CHAPTER III

One day toward the middle of June Valerie did not arrive on time at the
studio. She had never before been late.

About two o'clock Sam Ogilvy sauntered in, a skull pipe in his mouth,
his hair rumpled:

"It's that damn mermaid of mine," he said, "can't you come up and look
at her and tell me what's the trouble, Kelly?"

"Not now. Who's posing?"

"Rita. She's in a volatile humour, too--fidgets; denies fidgeting;
reproaches me for making her keep quiet; says I draw like a bum
chimney--no wonder my work's rotten! Besides, she's in a tub of water,
wearing that suit of fish-scales I had made for Violet Cliland, and she
says it's too tight and she's tired of the job, anyway. Fancy my mental
condition."

"Oh, she won't throw you down. Rita is a good sport," said Neville.

"I hope so. It's an important picture. Really, Kelly, it's great
stuff--a still, turquoise-tinted pool among wet rocks; ebb tide; a
corking little mermaid caught in a pool left by the receding waves--all
tones and subtle values," he declared, waving his arm.

"Don't paint things in the air with your thumb," said Nev