"Don't go on, I beg of you!" he implored. "I'm not such a fat-headed idiot as to suppose that you _are_ in love with me. What I wanted to ask you was to give me a show. You see, I've arranged with Mr. Thorold to stand, not only for this picture, but for an oil-painting, which I suppose--don't know much about art--will take some time." "You have? Well, of all the----!" "Quite so," he said meekly. "You see, it will give me a chance of trying to explain to you that, if you refuse me, it will be--oh, worse than a conical bullet in a particularly vital spot. All I ask is that you will look in now and again, and--and give me an opportunity of--of----" "Bothering me to death," finished Kitty for him. "No; bothering you into an engagement--which is sometimes a serious affair, but not always fatal," he said frankly. "Come, Miss Kitty, don't be hard on me! It's not much to ask----" "Oh, isn't it?" interjected Kitty with fine irony. "Thank you. Captain Barnard." "If you were in love with me--absurd idea, of course! but I'm just putting the case--I'd come and sit with you and give you any amount of chances." Kitty heard her father's returning footsteps, and she stood up and looked from side to side, and then at this meekly audacious young man, with a mixture of astonishment and bewilderment--and something else I cannot define--in her really wonderful eyes. "Well, of all the cool----" she said again. But he cut her short. "That's all right," he said breathlessly; "thank you ever so much. Your father's coming. I'm to be here at eleven o'clock every morning." "And you think," said Kitty, as hurriedly, "that, by simply sitting here and regarding you in that absurd attitude, I shall fall in----?" [Illustration] "Oh, no; not at all. Fortune will have pity on me and give me an opportunity for seeing you for a minute or two alone. Besides, perhaps--I only say perhaps, mind!--you might be induced to lunch at an A.B.C. shop," he jerked out in a rapid whisper, as the innocent parent returned with his yellow ochre. Kitty went up to her room, flung herself into a chair in her favourite attitude, with her chin in her hands, and stared at nothing--no, not nothing, but at the handsome face and manly form of a wounded soldier. Of course, she would not go near the studio while he was there. Consequently, the next morning, at half-past eleven, she entered with refreshment on a tray; and, with downcast eyes and a blush, informed her father that she had left his soda-and-milk in the dining-room because a change of scene and air would be good for him. [Illustration] She was still rosy with shame when the model sprang from the dais, caught her hand, and declared fervently that she was an angel. "No, I am a sly and deceitful, not to say forward, girl," said Kitty. "But I've only made an opportunity to tell you that I'm not coming into the studio again while you're here."