"I wonder why you asked me to tea?" she mused.
"What?" He turned around to look at her.
"You never before asked me to do such a thing," she said, candidly.
"You're an absent-minded man, Mr. Neville."
"It never occurred to me," he retorted, amused. "Tea is weak-minded."
"It occurred to me. That's what part of my 'thorough talk' is to be about; your carelessness in noticing me except professionally."
He continued working, rapidly now; and it seemed to her as though something—a hint of the sombre—had come into his face—nothing definite—but the smile was no longer there, and the brows were slightly knitted.
Later he glanced up impatiently at the sky: the summer clouds wore a deeper rose and gold.
"We'd better have our foolish tea," he said, abruptly, driving his brushes into a bowl of black soap and laying aside his palette for his servant to clean later.
For a while, not noticing her, he fussed about his canvas, using a knife here, a rag there, passing to and fro across the scaffolding, oblivious of the flight of time, until at length the waning light began to prophesy dusk, and he came to himself with a guilty start.
Below, in the studio, Valerie sat, fully dressed except for hat and gloves, head resting in the padded depths of an armchair, watching him in silence.
"I declare," he said, looking down at her contritely, "I never meant to keep you all this time. Good Lord! Have I been puttering up here for an hour and a half! It's nearly eight o'clock! Why on earth didn't you speak to me, Valerie?"
"It's a braver girl than I am who'll venture to interrupt you at work, Kelly," she said, laughingly. "I'm a little afraid of you."
"Nonsense! I wasn't doing anything. My Heaven!—can it be eight o'clock?"
"It is…. You said we were going to have tea."
"Tea! Child, you can't have tea at eight o'clock! I'm terribly sorry"—he came down the ladder, vexed with himself, wiping the paint from his hands with a bunch of cheese cloth—"I'm humiliated and ashamed, Miss West. Wait a moment—"
He walked hastily through the next room into his small suite of apartments, washed his hands, changed his painter's linen blouse for his street coat, and came back into the dim studio.
"I'm really sorry, Valerie," he said. "It was rotten rude of me."
"So am I sorry. It's absurd, but I feel like a perfectly unreasonable kid about it…. You never before asked me—and I—wanted to—stay—so much—"
"Why didn't you remind me, you foolish child!"
"Somehow I couldn't…. I wanted you to think of it."
"Well, I'm a chump…." He stood before her in the dim light; she still reclined in the armchair, not looking at him, one arm crook'd over her head and the fingers closed tightly over the rosy palm which was turned outward, resting across her forehead.
For a few moments neither spoke; then:
"I'm horridly lonely to-night," she said, abruptly.
"Why, Valerie! What a—an unusual—"
"I want to talk to you…. I suppose you are too hungry to want to talk now."
"N-no, I'm not." He began to laugh: "What's the matter, Valerie? What is on your mind? Have you any serious fidgets, or are you just a spoiled, pretty girl?"
"Spoiled, Kelly. There's nothing really the matter. I just felt like—what you asked me to do—"
She jumped up suddenly, biting her lips with vexation: "I don't know what I'm saying—except that it's rather rude of me—and I've got to go home. Good-night—I think my hat is in the dressing-room—"
He stood uneasily watching her pin it before the mirror; he could just see her profile and the slender, busy hands white in the dusk.
When she returned, slowly drawing on her long gloves, she said to him with composure:
"Some day ask me again. I really would like it—if you would."
"Do you really think that you could stand the excitement of taking a cup of weak tea with me," he said, jestingly—"after all those jolly dinners and suppers and theatres and motor parties that I hear about?"
She nodded and held out her hand with decision:
"Good-night."
He retained her hand a moment, not meaning to—not really intending to ask her what he did ask her. And she raised her velvet eyes gravely:
"Do you really want me?"
"Yes…. I don't know why I never asked you before—"
"It was absurd not to," she said, impulsively; "I'd have gone anywhere with you the first day I ever knew you! Besides, I dress well enough for you not to be ashamed of me."
He began to laugh: "Valerie, you funny little thing! You funny, funny little thing!"
"Not in the slightest," she retorted, sedately. "I'm having a heavenly time for the first time in my life, and I have so wanted you to be part of it … of course you are part of it," she added, hastily—"most of it! I only meant that I—I'd like to be a little in your other life—have you enter mine, a little—just so I can remember, in years to come, an evening with you now and then—to see things going on around us—to hear what you think of things that we see together…. Because, with you, I feel so divinely free, so unembarrassed, so entirely off my guard…. I don't mean to say that I don't have a splendid time with the others even when I have to watch them; I do—and even the watching is fun—"
The child-like audacity and laughing frankness, the confidence of her attitude toward him were delightfully refreshing. He looked into her pretty, eager, engaging face, smiling, captivated.
"Valerie," he said, "tell me something—will you?"
"Yes, if I can."
"I'm more or less of a painting machine. I've made myself so, deliberately—to the exclusion of other interests. I wonder"—he looked at her musingly—"whether I'm carrying it too far for my own good."
"I don't understand."
"I mean—is there anything machine-made about my work? Does it lack—does it lack anything?"
"No!" she said, indignantly loyal. "Why do you ask me that?"
"People—some people say it does lack—a certain quality."
She said with supreme contempt: "You must not believe them. I also hear things—and I know it is an unworthy jealousy that—"
"What have you heard?" he interrupted.
"Absurdities. I don't wish even to think of them—"
"I wish you to. Please. Such things are sometimes significant."
"But—is there any significance in what a few envious artists say—or a few silly models—"
"More significance in what they say than in a whole chorus of professional critics."
"Are you serious?" she asked, astonished.
"Perfectly. Without naming anybody or betraying any confidence, what have you heard in criticism of my work? It's from models and brother painters that the real truth comes—usually distorted, half told, maliciously hinted sometimes—but usually the germ of truth is to be found in what they say, however they may choose to say it."
Valerie leaned back against the door, hands clasped behind her, eyebrows bent slightly inward in an unwilling effort to remember.
Finally she said impatiently: "They don't know what they're talking about. They all say, substantially, the same thing—"
"What is that thing?"
"Why—oh, it's too silly to repeat—but they say there is nothing lovable about your work—that it's inhumanly and coldly perfect—too—too—" she flushed and laughed uncertainly—"'too