"Valerie! You bad little thing! Don't you know enough to stop when you're tired?"
"Ididn't know I was so utterly gone," she said, bewildered.
He passed his arm around her and supported her to the sofa where she sat, demure, a little surprised at her collapse, yet shyly enjoying his disconcerted attentions to her.
"It's your fault, Kelly. You had such a queer expressionnot at all like youthat I tried harder than ever to help youand fell down for my pains."
"You're an angel," he said, contritely, "but a silly one."
"A scared one, Kellyand a fallen one." She laughed, flexing the muscles of her benumbed leg: "Your expression intimidated me. I didn't recognise you; I could not form any opinion of what was going on inside that very stern and frowning head of yours. If you look like that I'll never dare call you Kelly."
"Did I seem inhuman?"
"N-no. On the contraryvery humanordinarylike the usual ill-tempered artist man, with whom I have learned how to deal. You know," she added, teasingly, "that you are calm and god-like, usuallyand when you suddenly became a mere mortal"
"I'll tell you what I'll do with you," he said; "I'll pick you up and put you to bed."
"I wish you would, Kelly. I haven't had half enough sleep."
He sat down beside her on the sofa: "Don't talk any more of that god-like business," he growled, "or I'll find the proper punishment."
"Would you punish me, Kelly?"
"I sure would."
"If I displeased you?"
"You bet."
"Really?" She turned partly toward him, half in earnest. "Supposesuppose" but she stopped suddenly, with a light little laugh that lingered pleasantly in the vast, still room.
She said: "I begin to think that there are two Kellysno, one Kelly and one Louis. Kelly is familiar to me; I seem to have known him all my lifethe happy part of my life. Louis I have just seen for the first timethere at the easel, painting, peering from me to his canvas with Kelly's good-looking eyes all narrow with worry"
"What on earth are you chattering about, Valerie?"
"You and Kelly. I don't quite know which I like bestthe dear, sweet, kind, clever, brilliant, impersonal, god-like Kelly, or this new Louisso very abrupt in speaking to me"
"Valerie, dear! Forgive me. I'm out of sorts somehow. It beganI don't knowwaiting for youwondering if you could be illall alone. Then that ass, Sam Ogilvyoh, it's just oversmoking I guess, orI don't know what."
She sat regarding him, head tipped unconsciously on one side in an attitude suggesting a mind concocting malice.
"Louis?"
"What?"
"You're very attractive when you're god-like"
"You little wretch!"
"Butyou're positively dangerous when you're human."
"Valerie! I'll"
"The great god Kelly, or the fascinating, fearsome, erring Louis! Which is it to be? I've an idea that the time is come to decide!"
Fairly radiating a charming aura of malice she sat back, nursing one knee, distractingly pretty and defiant, saying: "I will call you a god if I like!"
"I'll tell you what, Valerie," he said, half in earnest; "I've played grandmother to you long enough, by Heck!"
"Oh, Kelly, be lofty and Olympian! Be a god and shame the rest of us!"
"I'll shamefully resemble one of 'em in another moment if you continue tormenting me!"
"Which one, great one?"
"Jupiter, little lady. He was the boss philanderer you know."
"What is a philanderer, my Olympian friend?"
"Oh, one of those Olympian divinities who always began the day by kissing the girls all around."
"Before breakfast?"
"Certainly."
"It'safter breakfast, Kelly."
"Luncheon and dinner still impend."
"BesidesI'm not a bit lonely to-day. I'm afraid I wouldn't let you, KelI mean Louis."
"Why didn't you say 'Kelly'?"
"Kelly is too god-like to kiss."
"Oh! So that's the difference! Kelly isn't human; Louis is."
"Kelly, to me," she admitted, "is practically kissless. I haven't thought about Louis in that regard."
"Consider the matter thoroughly."
"Do you wish me to?" She bent her head, smiling. Then, looking up with enchanting audacity:
"I really don't know, Mr. Neville. Some day when I'm lonelyand if Louis is at home and Kelly is outyou and I might spend an evening together on a moonlit lake and see how much of a human being Louis can be."
She laughed, watching him under the dark lashes, charming mouth mocking him in every curve.
"Do you think you're likely to be lonely to-night?" he asked, surprised at the slight acceleration of his pulses.
"No, I don't. Besides, you'd be only the great god Kelly to me this evening. Besides that I'm going to dinner with Querida, and afterward we're going to see the 'Joy of the Town' at the Folly Theatre."
"I didn't know," he said, curtly. For a few moments he sat there, looking interestedly at a familiar door-knob. Then rising: "Do you feel all right for posing?"
"Yes."
"Alors"
"Allons, mon dieu!" she laughed.
Work began. She thought, watching him with sudden and unexpected shyness, that he seemed even more aloof, more preoccupied, more worried, more intent than before. In this new phase the man she had known as a friend was now entirely gone, vanished! Here stood an utter stranger, very human, very determined, very deeply perplexed, very much in earnest. Everything about this man was unknown to her. There seemed to be nothing about him that particularly appealed to her confidence, either; yet the very uncertainty was interesting her nowintensely.
This other phase of his dual personality had been so completely a surprise that, captivated, curious, she could keep neither her gaze from him nor her thoughts. Was it that she was going to miss in him the other charm, lose the delight in his speech, his impersonal and kindly manner, miss the comfortable security she had enjoyed with him, perhaps after some half gay, half sentimental conflict with lesser men?
What was she to expect from this brand-new incarnation of Louis Neville? The delightful indifference, fascinating absent-mindedness and personal neglect of the other phase? Would he be god enough to be less to her, now? Man enough to be more than other men? For a moment she had a little shrinking, a miniature panic lest this man turn too much like other men. But she let her eyes rest on him, and knew he would not. Whatever Protean changes might yet be reserved for her to witness, she came to the conclusion that this man was a man apart, different, and would not disappoint her no matter what he turned into.
She thought to herself: "If I want Kelly to lean on, he'll surely appear, god-like, impersonally nice, and kindly as ever; if I want Louis to torment and provoke and flirt witha littlea very littleI'm quite sure he'll come, too. Whatever else is contained in Mr. Neville I don't know; but I like him separately and compositely, and I'm happy when I'm with him."
With which healthy conclusion she asked if she might rest, and came around to look at the canvas.
As she had stood in silence for some time, he asked her, a little nervously, what she thought of it.
"LouisI don't know."
"Is your opinion unfavourable?"
"N-no. I am like that, am I not?"
"In a shadowy way. It will be like you."
"Am I asinteresting?"
"More so," he said.
"Are you going to make mebeautiful?"
"Yesor cut this canvas into shreds."
"Oh-h!" she exclaimed with a soft intake of breath; "would you have the heart to destroy me after you've made me?"
"In a shadowy way. It will be like you."
"Am I asinteresting?"
"More so," he said.
"Are you going to make mebeautiful?"
"Yesor cut this canvas into shreds."
"Oh-h!" she exclaimed with a soft intake of breath; "would you have the heart to destroy me after you've made me?"
"I don't know what I'd do, Valerie. I never felt just this way about anything. If I can't paint youa human, breathing youwith all of you there on the canvasall of you, soul, mind, and bodyall of your beauty, your youth, your sadness, happinessyour errors, your nobilityyou, Valerie!then there's no telling what I'll do."
She said nothing. Presently she resumed the pose and he his painting.
It became very still in the sunny studio.
CHAPTER IV
In that month of June, for the first time in his deliberately active career, Neville experienced a disinclination to paint. And when he realised that it was disinclination, it appalled him. Somethinghe didn't understand whathad suddenly left him satiatedand with all the uneasiness and discontent of satiation he forced matters until he could force no further.
He had commissions, several, and valuable; and let them lie. For the first time in all his life the blank canvas of an unexecuted commission left him untempted, unresponsive, weary.
He had, also, his portrait of Valerie to continue. He continued it mentally, at intervals; but for several days, now, he had not laid a brush to it.
"It's funny," he said to Querida, going out on the train to his sister's country home one delicious morning"it's confoundedly odd that I should turn lazy in my old age. Do you think I'm worked out?" He gulped down a sudden throb of fear smilingly.
"Lie fallow," said Querida, gently. "No soil is deep enough to yield without rest."
"Yours does."
"Oh, for me," said Querida, showing his snowy teeth, "I often sicken of my fat sunlight, frying everything to an iridescent omelette." He shrugged, laughed: "I turn lazy for months every year. Try it, my friend. Don't you even keep mi-carême?"
Neville stared out of the window at the station platform past which they were gliding, and rose with Querida as the train stopped. His sister's touring car was waiting; into it stepped Querida, and he followed; and away they sped over the beautiful rolling country, where handsome cattle tried to behave like genuine Troyon's, and silvery sheep attempted to imitate Mauve, and even the trees, separately or in groups, did their best to look like sections of Rousseau, Diaz, and even Corotbut succeeded only in resembling questionable imitations.
"There's to be quite a week-end party?" inquired Querida.
"I don't know. My sister telephoned me to fill in. I fancy the party is for you."
"For me!" exclaimed Querida with delightful enthusiasm. "That is most charming of Mrs. Collis."
"They'll all think it charming of you. Lord, what a rage you've become and what a furor you've aroused! And you deserve it," added Neville, coolly.
Querida looked at him, calm intelligence in his dark gaze; and understood the honesty of the comment.
"That," he said, "if you permit the vigour of expression, is damn nice of you, Neville. But you can afford to be generous to other painters."
"Can I?" Neville turned and gazed at Querida, gray eyes clear in their searching inquiry. Then he laughed a little and looked out over the sunny landscape.
Querida's olive cheeks had reddened a trifle.
Neville said: "What is the trouble with my work, anyway? Is it what some of you fellows say?"
Querida did not pretend to misunderstand:
"You're really a great painter, Neville. And you know it. Must you have everything?"
"WellI'm going after it."
"Surelysurely. I, also. God knows my work lacks many, many things"
"But it doesn't lack that one essential which mine lacks. What is it?"
Querida laughed: "I can't explain. For meyour Byzantine canvasthere is in it something not intimate"
"Austere?"
"Yeseven in those divine and lovely throngs. There is, perhaps, an aloofnesseven a self-denial" He laughed again: "I deny myself nothingon canvaseven I have the audacity to try to draw as you do!"
Neville sat thinking, watching the landscape speed away on either side in a running riot of green.
"Self-denialtoo much of itseparates you from your kind," said Querida. "The solitary fasters are never personally pleasant; hermits are the world's public admiration and private abomination. Oh, the good world dearly loves to rub elbows with a talented sinner and patronise him and sentimentalise over himone whose miracles don't hurt their eyes enough to blind them to the pleasant discovery that his halo is tarnished in spots and needs polishing, and that there's a patch on the seat of his carefully creased toga."
Neville laughed. Presently he said: "Until recently I've cherished theories. One of 'em was to subordinate everything in life to the enjoyment of a single pleasurethe pleasure of work. I guess experience is putting that theory on the blink."
"Surely. You might as well make an entire meal of one favourite dish. For a day you could stand it, even like it, perhaps. After that" he shrugged.
"ButI'd rather spend my time paintingif I could stand the diet."
"Would you? I don't know what I'd rather do. I like almost everything. It makes me paint better to talk to a pretty woman, for example. To kiss her inspires a masterpiece."
"Does it?" said Neville, thoughtfully.
"Of course. A week or two of motoringriding, dancing, white flannel idlenessall these I adore. And," tapping his carefully pinned lilac tie"inside of me I know that every pleasant experience, every pleasure I offer myself, is going to make me a better painter!"
"Experience," repeated the other.
"By all means and every meansexperience in pleasure, in idleness, in love, in sorrowbut experience!always experience, by hook or by crook, and at any cost. That is the main idea, Nevillemy main idealike the luscious agglomeration of juicy green things which that cow is eating; they all go to make good milk. Bah!that's a stupid simile," he added, reddening.
Neville laughed. Presently he pointed across the meadows.
"Is that your sister's place?" asked Querida with enthusiasm, interested and disappointed. "What a charming house!"
"That is Ashuelyn, my sister's house. Beyond is El Naúar, Cardemon's place. Here we are."
The small touring car stopped; the young men descended to a grassy terrace where a few people in white flannels had gathered after breakfast. A slender woman, small of bone and built like an undeveloped girl, came forward, the sun shining on her thick chestnut hair.
"Hello, Lily," said Neville.
"Hello, Louis. Thank you for coming, Mr. Queridait is exceedingly nice of you to come" She gave him her firm, cool hand, smiled on him with unfeigned approval, turned and presented him to the othersMiss Aulne, Miss Swift, Miss Annan, a Mr. Cameron, and, a moment later, to her husband, Gordon Collis, a good-looking, deeply sun-burned young man whose only passion, except his wife and baby, was Ashuelyn, the home of his father.
But it was a quiet passion which bored nobody, not even his wife.
When conversation became general, with Querida as the centre around which it eddied, Neville, who had seated himself on the gray stone parapet near his sister, said in a low voice: