little
thing running about underfoot!--I'm sorry you feel angry----"

"I do not. But how can I have anything to talk to you about, Mr.
Trenor, when you have never even noticed me all these years, although
often I have handed you your keys and your letters."

"It was quite stupid of me. I'm sorry. But a man, you see, doesn't
notice children----"

"Some men do."

"You mean Mr. Barres! That _is_ unkind. Why rub it in, Dulcie? I'm
rather an interesting fellow, after all."

"Are you?" she asked absently.

Her honest indifference to him was perfectly apparent to Esme Trenor.
This would never do. She must be subdued, made sane, disciplined!

"Do you know," he drawled, leaning lankly nearer, dropping both arms
on the cloth, and fixing his heavy-lidded eyes intensely on her,"--do
you know--do you guess, perhaps, why I never spoke to you in all these
years?"

"You did not trouble yourself to speak to me, I imagine."

"You are wrong. I was _afraid_!" And he stared at her pallidly.

"Afraid?" she repeated, puzzled.

He leaned nearer, confidential, sad:

"Shall I tell you a precious secret, Dulcie? I am a coward. I am a
slave of fear. I am afraid of beauty! Isn't that a very strange thing
to say? Can you understand the subtlety of that indefinable
psychology? Fear is an emotion. Fear of the beautiful is still a
subtler emotion. Fear, itself, is beautiful beyond words. Beauty is
Fear. Fear is Beauty. Do you follow me, Dulcie?"

"No," said the girl, bewildered.

Esme sighed:

"Some day you will follow me. It is my destiny to be followed,
pursued, haunted by loveliness impotently seeking to express itself to
me, while I, fearing it, dare only to express my fear with brush and
pencil!... _When_ shall I paint you?" he added with sad benevolence.

"What?"

"When shall I try to interpret upon canvas my subtle fear of you?"
And, as the girl remained mute: "When," he explained languidly, "shall
I appoint an hour for you to sit to me?"

"I am Mr. Barres's model," she said, flushing.

"I shall have to arrange it with him, then," he nodded, wearily.

"I don't think you can."

"Fancy! Why not?"

"Because I do not wish to sit to anybody except Mr. Barres," she said
candidly, "and what you paint does not interest me at all."

"Are you familiar with my work?" he asked incredulously.

She shook her head, shrugged, and turned to Barres, who had at last
relinquished Thessalie to Westmore.

"Well, Sweetness," he said