r she considered very deeply.
But that he was embodying and creating something of the existence of
which neither he nor she had been aware a month ago, was awaking
something within them that had never before stirred or given sign of
life.

Since the last section of the mural decoration for the new court house
had been shipped to its destination, he had busied himself on two
canvases, a portrait of his sister in furs, and the portrait of Valerie.

Lily Collis came in the mornings twice a week to sit for her; and once
or twice Stephanie Swift came with her; also Sandy Cameron, ruddy, bald,
jovial, scoffing, and insatiably curious.

"Where do you keep all those pretty models, Louis?" he demanded, prying
aside the tapestry with the crook of his walking stick, and peeping
behind furniture and hangings and big piles of canvases. "Be a sport and
introduce us; Stephanie wants to see a few as well as I do."

Neville shrugged and went on painting, which exasperated Cameron.

"It's a fraud," he observed, in a loud, confidential aside to Stephanie;
"this studio ought to be full of young men in velvet coats and bunchy
ties, singing, 'Oh la--la!' and dextrously balancing on their baggy
knees a series of assorted soubrettes. It's a bluff, a hoax, a con game!
Are you going to stand for it? I don't see any absinthe either--or even
any Vin ordinaire! Only a tea-pot--a _tea-pot!_" he repeated in
unutterable scorn. "Why, there's more of Bohemia in a Broad Street Trust
Company than there is in this Pullman car studio!"

Mrs. Collis was laughing so that her brother had difficulty in going on
with her portrait.

"Get out of here, Sandy," he said--"or take Stephanie into the rest of
the apartment, somewhere, and tell her your woes."

Stephanie, who had been exploring, turning over piles of chassis and
investigating canvases and charcoal studies stacked up here and there
against the wainscot, pulled aside an easel which impeded her progress,
and in so doing accidentally turned the canvas affixed to it toward the
light.

"Hello!" exclaimed Cameron briskly, "who is this?"

Lily turned her small, aristocratic head, and Stephanie looked around.

"What a perfectly beautiful girl!" she exclaimed impulsively; "who is
she, Louis?"

"A model," he said calmly; but the careless and casual exposure of the
canvas had angered him so suddenly that his own swift emotion astonished
him.

Lily had risen from her seat, and now stood looking fixedl