She raised her eyes, still smiling, a little incredulous, very slightly embarrassed: "I don't think your painting requires any such sacrifices of you, Mr. Neville.... Are you going to take me somewhere to dinner? I'm dreadfully hungry." "You poor little girl, of course I am. Besides, you must be suffering under the terrible suppression of that 'thorough talk' which you--" "It doesn't really require a thorough talk," she said; "I'll tell you now what I had to say. No, don't interrupt, please! I want to--please let me--so that nothing will mar our enjoyment of each other and of the gay world around us when we are dining.... It is this: Sometimes--once in a while--I become absurdly lonely, which makes me a fool, temporarily. And--will you let me telephone you at such times?--just to talk to you--perhaps see you for a minute?" "Of course. You know my telephone number. Call me up whenever you like." "_Could_ I see you at such moments? I--there's a--some--a kind of sentiment about me--when I'm _very_ lonely; and I've been foolish enough to let one or two men see it--in fact I've been rather indiscreet--silly--with a man--several men--now and then. A lonely girl is easily sympathised with--and rather likes it; and is inclined to let herself go a little.... I don't want to.... And at times I've done it.... Sam Ogilvy nearly kissed me, which really doesn't count--does it? But I let Harry Annan do it, once.... If I'm weak enough to drift into such silliness I'd better find a safeguard. I've been thinking--thinking--that it really does originate in a sort of foolish loneliness ...not in anything worse. So I thought I'd have a thorough talk with you about it. I'm twenty-one--with all my experience of life and of men crowded into a single winter and spring. I have as friends only the few people I have met through you. I have nobody to see unless I see them--nowhere to go unless I go where they ask me.... So I thought I'd ask you to let me depend a little on you, sometimes--as a refuge from isolation and morbid thinking now and then. And from other mischief--for which I apparently have a capacity--to judge by what I've done--and what I've let men do already." She laid her hand lightly on his arm in sudden and impulsive confidence: "That's my 'thorough talk.' I haven't any one else to tell it to. And I've told you the worst." She smiled at him adorably: "And now I am ready to go out with you," she said,--"go anywhere in the world with you, Kelly. And I am going to be perfectly happy--if you are." CHAPTER III One day toward the middle of June Valerie did not arrive on time at the studio. She had never before been late. About two o'clock Sam Ogilvy sauntered in, a skull pipe in his mouth, his hair rumpled: "It's that damn mermaid of mine," he said, "can't you come up and look at her and tell me what's the trouble, Kelly?" "Not now. Who's posing?"