POLA For the next few days Mart and Lav found Sidney strangely quiet. Sidney on her part wondered if they could not tell, simply by looking at her, that her uncomfortable heart carried a great secret. Then something happened that put pirates and secrets completely out of her mind, something so amazing, so unexpected, as to turn her world on its head. Pola came! In her zeal to get out of each day all the joy that it offered Sidney had forgotten Pola, or at least she had tucked her idol into a far-back corner of her mind where it was fast gathering dust. One morning Mart, racing over the sand of the beach, hailed her. "Sid! Sid! They want us to pose for them! That Craig woman and the others!" Sid gasped, unbelieving. The girls had often wished they might pose for some of the artists. Mart, having caught up with her, clutched her arm and hauled her hurriedly forward toward where little groups of artists were gathering on the beach in the shadow of one of the long wharves. "But--but--" Sidney protested breathlessly. It would be fun to pose, of course, but not dressed as she was at that moment! Vick, in the picture that had been hung in Paris, had worn a black velvet dress which the artist had borrowed for her sitting; she could run home and don the precious cherry crêpe de chine that she had not worn since she had come to Sunset Lane. "Miss Craig said to get that--other--girl--" Mart was explaining as they ran. "And they're waiting." Miss Craig, a pretty, earnest-eyed woman who was studying in one of the summer art classes, came forward to meet them. Her glance went over Sidney's figure with enthusiastic approval. "You found her! How nice. Miss Higgins will pose you--" "Can't I go home and change my dress? I have an awfully pretty--" But Miss Craig cut Sidney's appeal short. "_Gracious_ no! Why, that would _spoil_ you! We want you exactly as you are this moment--both of you. You're--you're _precious_!" Sidney resented her "precious." She resented other remarks that came to their ears as Miss Higgins, who had charge of the little group, posed them against an old, overturned dory. "A perfect type--native--girls----freedom----wild beauty----" She resented the rotting dory. Vick had leaned against a crimson velvet chair. Why, her hair had not been combed since the morning before, her skirt was in tatters where she had torn it climbing into Top Notch; she was horribly conscious of her long legs, bare, brown, and bruised. Sidney found that posing in the morning sun on a beach at Provincetown was not the lark Vick had declared posing for the great Stuart Gelding had been. But then Vick had flirted a little with Stuart Gelding and had always had a cup of tea with him and his wife afterward; these art students appeared to have forgotten that their models were human with legs that ached from holding a position and arms that trembled with very eagerness to move. It was not one bit of fun.