"Well, how goes it, Lily?"
"All right," she replied with boyish directness, but in the same low tone. "Mother and father have spent a week with us. You saw them in town?"
"Of course. I'll run up to Spindrift House to see them as often as I can this summer. How's the kid?"
"Fine. Do you want to see him?"
"Yes, I'd like to."
His sister caught his hand, jumped up, and led him into the house to the nursery where a normal and in nowise extraordinary specimen of infancy reposed in a cradle, pink with slumber, one thumb inserted in its mouth.
"Isn't he a wonder," murmured Neville, venturing to release the thumb.
The young mother bent over, examining her offspring in all the eloquent silence of pride unutterable. After a little while she said: "I've got to feed him. Go back to the others, Louis, and say I'll be down after a while."
He sauntered back through the comfortable but modest house, glancing absently about him on his way to the terrace, nodding to familiar faces among the servants, stopping to inspect a sketch of his own which he had done long ago and which his sister loved and he hated.
"Rotten," he murmured"it has an innocence about it that is actually more offensive than stupidity."
On the terrace Stephanie Swift came over to him:
"Do you want a single at tennis, Louis? The others are hot for Bridgeexcept Gordon Collisand he is going to dicker with a farmer over some land he wants to buy."
Neville looked at the others:
"Do you mean to say that you people are going to sit here all hunched up around a table on a glorious day like this?"
"We are," said Alexander Cameron, calmly breaking the seal of two fresh, packs. "You artists have nothing to do for a living except to paint pretty models, and when the week end comes you're in fine shape to caper and cut up didoes. But we business men are too tired to go galumphing over the greensward when Saturday arrives. It's a wicker chair and a 'high one,' and peaceful and improving cards for ours."
Alice Annan laughed and glanced at Querida degrees Cameron's idea was her idea of what her brother Harry was doing for a living; but she wasn't sure that Querida would think it either flattering or humorous.
But Jose Querida laughed, too, saying: "Quite right, Mr. Cameron. It's only bluff with, us; we never work. Life is one continual comic opera."
"It's a cinch," murmured Cameron. "Stocks and bonds are exciting, but your business puts it all over us. Nobody would have to drive me to business every morning if there was a pretty model in a cosey studio awaiting me."
"Sandy, you're rather horrid," said Miss Aulne, watching him sort out the jokers from the new packs and, with a skilful flip, send them scaling out, across the grass, for somebody to pick up.
Cameron said: "How about this Trilby business, anyway, Miss Annan? You have a brother in it. Is the world of art full of pretty models clad in ballet skirtswhen they wear anything? Is it all one mad, joyous melange of high-brow conversation discreetly peppered with low-brow revelry? Yes? No? Inform an art lover, pleaseas they say in the Times Saturday Review."
"I don't know," said Miss Annan, laughing. "Harry never has anybody interesting in the studio when he lets me take tea there."
Rose Aulne said: "I saw some photographs of a very beautiful girl in Sam Ogilvy's studioa model. What is her name, Alice?the one Sam and Harry are always raving over?"
"They call her Valerie, I believe."
"Yes, that's the oneValerie West, isn't it? Is it, Louis? You know her, of course."
Neville nodded coolly.
"Introduce me," murmured Cameron, spreading a pack for cutting. "Perhaps she'd like to see the Stock Exchange when I'm at my best."
"Is she such a beauty? Do you know her, too, Mr. Querida?" asked Rose Aulne.
Querida laughed: "I do. Miss West is a most engaging, most amiable and cultivated girl, and truly very beautiful."
"Oh! They are sometimes educated?" asked Stephanie, surprised.
"Sometimes they are even equipped to enter almost any drawing-room in New York. It doesn't always require the very highest equipment to do that," he added, laughing.
"That sounds like romantic fiction," observed Alice Annan. "You are a poet, Mr. Querida."
"Oh, it's not often a girl like Valerie West crosses our path. I admit that. Now and then such a comet passes across our skyor is reported. I never before saw any except this one."
"If she's as much of a winner as all that," began Cameron with decision,
"I want to meet her immediately"
"Mere brokers are out of it," said Alice. "Cut, please."
Rose Aulne said: "If you painters only knew it, your stupid studio teas would be far more interesting if you'd have a girl like this Valerie West to pour for you and for us to see."
"Yes," added Alice; "but they're a vain lot. They think we are unsophisticated enough to want to go to their old studios and be perfectly satisfied to look at their precious pictures, and listen to their art patter. I've told Harry that what we want is to see something of the real studio life; and he tries to convince me that it's about as exciting as a lawyer's life when he dictates to his stenographer."
"Is it?" asked Stephanie of Neville.
"Just about as exciting. Some few business men may smirk at their stenographers; some few painters may behave in the same way to their models. I fancy it's the exception to the rule in any kind of businessisn't it, Sandy?"
"Certainly," said Cameron, hastily. "I never winked at my stenographernever! never! Will you deal, Mr. Querida?" he asked, courteously.
"I should think a girl like that would be interesting to know," said Lily Collis, who had come up behind her brother and Stephanie Swift and stood, a hand on each of their shoulders, listening and looking on at the card game.
"That is what I wanted to say, too," nodded Stephanie. "I'd like to meet a really nice girl who is courageous enough, and romantic enough to pose for artists"
"You mean poor enough, don't you?" said Neville. "They don't do it because it's romantic."
"It must be romantic work."
"It isn't, I assure you. It's drudgeryand sometimes torture."
Stephanie laughed: "I believe it's easy work and a gay existence full of romance. Don't undeceive me, Louis. And I think you're selfish not to let us meet your beautiful Valerie at tea."
"Why not?" added his sister. "I'd like to see her myself."
"Oh, Lily, you know perfectly well that oil and water don't mix," he said with a weary shrug.
"I suppose we're the oil," remarked Rose Aulne"horrid, smooth, insinuating stuff. And his beautiful Valerie is the clear, crystalline, uncontaminated fountain of inspiration."
Lily Collis dropped her hands from Stephanie's and her brother's shoulders:
"Do ask us to tea to meet her, Louis," she coaxed.
"We've never seen a model"
"Do you want me to exhibit a sensitive girl as a museum freak?" he asked, impatiently.
"Don't you suppose we know how to behave toward her? Really, Louis, you"
"Probably you know how to behave. And I can assure you that she knows perfectly well how to behave toward anybody. But that isn't the question. You want to see her out of curiosity. You wouldn't make a friend of heror even an acquaintance. And I tell you, frankly, I don't think it's square to her and I won't do it. Women are nuisances in studios, anyway."
"What a charming way your brother has of explaining things," laughed Stephanie, passing her arm through Lily's: "Shall we reveal to him that he was seen with his Valerie at the St. Regis a week ago?"
"Why not?" he said, coolly, but inwardly exasperated. "She's as ornamental as anybody who dines there."
"I don't do that with my stenographers!" called out Cameron gleefully, cleaning up three odd in spades. "Oh, don't talk to me, Louis! You're a gay bunch all right!you're qualified, every one of you, artists and models, to join the merry, merry!"
Stephanie dropped Lily's arm with a light laugh, swung her tennis bat, tossed a ball into the sunshine, and knocked it over toward the tennis court.
"I'll take you on if you like, Louis!" she called back over her shoulder, then continued her swift, graceful pace, white serge skirts swinging above her ankles, bright hair wind-blowna lithe, full, wholesome figure, very comforting to look at.
"Come upstairs; I'll show you where Gordon's shoes are," said his sister.
Gordon's white shoes fitted him, also his white trousers. When he was dressed he came out of the room and joined his sister, who was seated on the stairs, balancing his racquet across her knees.
"Louis," she said, "how about the good taste of taking that model of yours to the St. Regis?"
"It was perfectly good taste," he said, carelessly.
"Stephanie took it like an angel," mused his sister.
"Why shouldn't she? If there was anything queer about it, you don't suppose I'd select the St. Regis, do you?"
"Nobody supposed there was anything queer."
"Well, then," he demanded, impatiently, "what's the row?"
"There is no row. Stephanie doesn't make what you call rows. Neither does anybody in your immediate family. I was merely questioning the wisdom of your public appearanceunder the circumstances."
"What circumstances?"
His sister looked at him calmly:
"The circumstances of your understanding with Stephanie. An understanding of years, which, in her mind at least, amounts to a tacit engagement."
"I'm glad you said that," he began, after a moment's steady thinking. "If that is the way that Stephanie and you still regard a college affair"
"Awhat!"
"A boy-and-girl preference which became an undergraduate romanceand has never amounted to anything more"
"Louis!"
"What?"
"Don't you care for her?"
"Certainly; as much as I ever didas much, as she really and actually cares for me," he answered, defiantly. "You know perfectly well what such affairs ever amount toin the sentimental-ever-after line. Infant sweethearts almost never marry. She has no more idea of it than have I. We are fond of each other; neither of us has happened, so far, to encounter the real thing. But as soon as the right man comes along Stephanie will spread her wings and take flight"
"You don't know her! Wellof all faithless wretchesyour inconstancy makes me positively ill!"
"Inconstancy! I'm not inconstant. I never saw a girl I liked better than Stephanie. I'm not likely to. But that doesn't mean that I want to marry her"
"For shame!"
"Nonsense! Why do you talk about inconstancy? It's a ridiculous word. What is constancy in love? Either an accident or a fortunate state of mind. To promise constancy in love is promising to continue in a state of mind over which your will has no control. It's never an honest promise; it can be only an honest hope. Love comes and goes and no man can stay it, and no man is its prophet. Coming unasked, sometimes undesired, often unwelcome, it goes unbidden, without reason, without logic, as inexorably as it came, governed by laws that no man has ever yet understood"
"Louis!" exclaimed his sister, bewildered; "what in the world are you lecturing about? Why, to hear you expound the anatomy of love"
He began to laugh, caught her hands, and kissed her:
"Little goose, that was all impromptu and horribly trite and commonplace. Only it was new to me because I never before took the trouble to consider it. But it's true, even if it is trite. People love or they don't love, and a regard for ethics controls only what they do about it."
"That's another Tupperesque truism, isn't it, dear?"
"Sure thing. Who am I to mock at the Proverbial One when I've never yet evolved anything better? Listen; you don't want me to marry Stephanie, do you?"
"Yes, I do."
"No, you don't. You think you do"
"I do, I do, Louis! She's the sweetest, finest, most generous, most suitable"
"Sure," he said, hastily, "she's all that except 'suitable'and she isn't that, and I'm not, either. For the love of Mike, Lily, let me go on admiring her, even loving her in a perfectly harmless"
"It isn't harmless to caress a girl"
"Whyyou can't call it caressing"
"What do you call it?"
"Nothing. We've always been on an intimate footing. She's perfectly unembarrassed aboutwhatever impulsiveerfugitive impulses"
"You do kiss her!"
"Seldomvery seldom. At moments the conditions happen accidentally tosuggestsome slight demonstrationof a very warm friendship"
"You positively sicken me! Do you think a nice girl is going to let a man paw her if she doesn't consider him pledged to her?"
"I don't think anything about it. Nice girls have done madder things than their eulogists admit. As a plain matter of fact you can't tell what anybody nice is going to do under theoretical circumstances. And the nicer they are the bigger the gambleparticularly if they're endowed with brains"
"That's cynicism. You seem to be developing several streaks"
"Polite blinking of facts never changes them. Conforming to conventional and accepted theories never yet appealed to intelligence. I'm not going to be dishonest with myself; that's one of the streaks I've developed. You ask me if I love Stephanie enough to marry her, and I say I don't. What's the good of blinking it? I don't love anybody enough to marry 'em; but I like a number of girls well enough to spoon with them."
"That is disgusting!"
"No, it isn't," he said, with smiling weariness; "it's the unvarnished truth about the average man. Why wink at it? The average man can like a lot of girls enough to spoon and sentimentalise with them. It's the pure accident of circumstance and environment that chooses for him the one he marries. There are myriads of others in the world with whom, under proper circumstances and environment, he'd have been just as happyoften happier. Choice is a mystery, constancy a gamble, discontent the one best bet. It isn't pleasant; it isn't nice fiction and delightful romance; it isn't poetry or precept as it is popularly inculcated; it's the brutal truth about the average man. And I'm going to find Stephanie. Have you any objection?"
"LouisI'm terribly disappointed in you"
"I'm disappointed, too. Until you spoke to me so plainly a few minutes ago I never clearly understood that I couldn't marry Stephanie. When I thought of it at all it seemed a vague and shadowy something, too far away to be really impendingthreateninglike death"
"Oh!" cried his sister in revolt. "I shall make it my business to see that Stephanie understands you thoroughly before this goes any farther"
"I wish to heaven you would," he said, so heartily that his sister, exasperated, turned her back and marched away to the nursery.
When he went out to the tennis court he found Stephanie idly batting the balls across the net with Cameron, who, being dummy, had strolled down to gibe at hera pastime both enjoyed:
"Here comes your Alonzo, fair ladylightly skipping o'er the greenyes, yeswearing the panties of his brother-in-law!" He fell into an admiring attitude and contemplated Neville with a simper, his ruddy, prematurely bald head cocked on one side: