e'll come, too. Whatever else is contained in Mr. Neville I
don't know; but I like him separately and compositely, and I'm happy
when I'm with him."

With which healthy conclusion she asked if she might rest, and came
around to look at the canvas.

As she had stood in silence for some time, he asked her, a little
nervously, what she thought of it.

"Louis--I don't know."

"Is your opinion unfavourable?"

"N-no. I _am_ like that, am I not?"

"In a shadowy way. It _will_ be like you."

"Am I as--interesting?"

"More so," he said.

"Are you going to make me--beautiful?"

"Yes--or cut this canvas into shreds."

"Oh-h!" she exclaimed with a soft intake of breath; "would you have the
heart to destroy me after you've made me?"

"I don't know what I'd do, Valerie. I never felt just this way about
anything. If I can't paint you--a human, breathing _you_--with all of
you there on the canvas--_all_ of you, soul, mind, and body--all of your
beauty, your youth, your sadness, happiness--your errors, your
nobility--_you_, Valerie!--then there's no telling what I'll do."

She said nothing. Presently she resumed the pose and he his painting.

It became very still in the sunny studio.

CHAPTER IV

In that month of June, for the first time in his deliberately active
career, Neville experienced a disinclination to paint. And when he
realised that it was disinclination, it appalled him. Something--he
didn't understand what--had suddenly left him satiated--and with all the
uneasiness and discontent of satiation he forced matters until he could
force no further.

He had commissions, several, and valuable; and let them lie. For the
first time in all his life the blank canvas of an unexecuted commission
left him untempted, unresponsive, weary.

He had, also, his portrait of Valerie to continue. He continued it
mentally, at intervals; but for several days, now, he had not laid a
brush to it.

"It's funny," he said to Querida, going out on the train to his sister's
country home one delicious morning--"it's confoundedly odd that I should
turn lazy in my old age. Do you think I'm worked out?" He gulped down a
sudden throb of fear smilingly.

"Lie fallow," said Querida, gently. "No soil is deep enough to yield
without rest."

"Yours does."

"Oh, for me," said Querida, showing his snowy teeth, "I often sicken of
my fat sunlight, frying everything to an iridescent omelette." He
shrugged, laughed: "I turn lazy for