I mean to do you. But I see Ralph
getting glum. Cheer up, my dear fellow; I daresay you'll be invited to
some of the sittings--that's for Miss Spragg to say.--Ah, here comes
your neighbour back, confound him--You'll let me know when we can
begin?"

As Popple moved away Undine turned eagerly to Marvell. "Do you suppose
there's time? I'd love to have him to do me!"

Ralph smiled. "My poor child--he WOULD 'do' you, with a vengeance.
Infernal cheek, his asking you to sit--"

She stared. "But why? He's painted your cousin, and all the smart
women."

"Oh, if a 'smart' portrait's all you want!"

"I want what the others want," she answered, frowning and pouting a
little. She was already beginning to resent in Ralph the slightest sign
of resistance to her pleasure; and her resentment took the form--a
familiar one in Apex courtships--of turning on him, in the next
entr'acte, a deliberately averted shoulder. The result of this was to
bring her, for the first time, in more direct relation to her other
neighbour. As she turned he turned too, showing her, above a shining
shirt-front fastened with a large imitation pearl, a ruddy plump snub
face without an angle in it, which yet looked sharper than a razor.
Undine's eyes met his with a startled look, and for a long moment they
remained suspended on each other's stare.

Undine at length shrank back with an unrecognizing face; but her
movement made her opera-glass slip to the floor, and her neighbour bent
down and picked it up.

"Well--don't you know me yet?" he said with a slight smile, as he
restored the glass to her.

She had grown white to the lips, and when she tried to speak the effort
produced only a faint click in her throat. She felt that the change in
her appearance must be visible, and the dread of letting Marvell see it
made her continue to turn her ravaged face to her other neighbour.
The round black eyes set prominently in the latter's round glossy
countenance had expressed at first only an impersonal and slightly
ironic interest; but a look of surprise grew in them as Undine's silence
continued.

"What's the matter? Don't you want me to speak to you?"

She became aware that Marvell, as if unconscious of her slight show of
displeasure, had left his seat, and was making his way toward the aisle;
and this assertion of independence, which a moment before she would so
deeply have resented, now gave her a feeling of intense relief.

"No--don't speak to me, pleas