energy as I am."

"Oh, I don't think I am."

"You are. Look at yourself! I never saw anybody so sound, so superbly
healthy, so"--he laughed--"adapted to dynamics. You've got to have an
outlet. Or there'll be the deuce to pay."

She looked at her fruit salad gravely, tasted it, and glanced up at him:

"I have never in all my life had any outlet--never even any outlook, Mr.
Neville."

"You should have had both," he grumbled, annoyed at himself for the
interest her words had for him; uneasy, now that she had responded, yet
curious to learn something about this fair young girl, approximately his
intellectual equal, who came to his door looking for work as a model. He
thought to himself that probably it was some distressing tale which he
couldn't help, and the recital of which would do neither of them any
good. Of stories of models' lives he was tired, satiated. There was no
use encouraging her to family revelations; an easy, pleasant footing was
far more amusing to maintain. The other hinted of intimacy; and that he
had never tolerated in his employees.

Yet, looking now across the table at her, a not unkind curiosity began
to prod him. He could easily have left matters where they were,
maintained the _status quo_ indefinitely--or as long as he needed her
services.

"Outlets are necessary," he said, cautiously. "Otherwise we go to the
bow-wows."

"Or--die."

"What?" sharply.

She looked up without a trace of self-consciousness or the least hint of
the dramatic:

"I would die unless I had an outlet. This is almost one. At least it
gives me something to do with my life."

"Posing?"

"Yes."

"I don't quite understand you."

"Why, I only mean that--the other"--she smiled--"what you call the
bow-wows, would not have been an outlet for me.... I was a show-girl for
two months last winter; I ought to know. And I'd rather have died
than--"

"I see," he said; "that outlet was too stupid to have attracted you."

She nodded. "Besides, I have principles," she said, candidly.

"Which effectually blocked that outlet. They sometimes kill, too, as you
say. Youth stifled too long means death--the death of youth at least.
Outlets mean life. The idea is to find a safe one."

She flushed in quick, sensitive response:

"_That_ is it; that is what I meant. Mr. Neville, I am twenty-one; and
do you know I never had a childhood? And I am simply wild for it--for
the girlhood and the playtime that I never had--"

She che