"Oh, just like other men--generously ready for any event. What self-sacrificing opportunists men are! After all, Kelly," she added, slipping easily into the vernacular, "it's always up to the girl." "Is it?" "Yes, I think so. I knew perfectly well that I had no business to let Querida's arm remain around me. But--there was a moon, Kelly." "Certainly." "Why do you say 'certainly'?" "Because there _was_ one." "But you say it in a manner--" She hesitated, continued her breakfast in leisurely reflection for a while, then: "Louis?" "Yes." "Am I too frank with you?" "Why?" "I don't know; I was just thinking. I tell you pretty nearly everything. If I didn't have you to tell--have somebody--" She considered, with brows slightly knitted--"if I didn't have _somebody_ to talk to, it wouldn't be very good for me. I realise that." "You need a grandmother," he said, drily; "and I'm the closest resemblance to one procurable." The imagery struck her as humorous and she laughed. "Poor Kelly," she said aloud to herself, "he is used and abused and imposed upon, and in revenge he offers his ungrateful tormentor delicious breakfasts. _What_ shall his reward be?--or must he await it in Paradise where he truly belongs amid the martyrs and the blessed saints!" Neville grunted. "Oh, _oh_! such a post-Raphaelite scowl! Job won't bow to you when you go aloft, Kelly. Besides, polite martyrs smile pleasantly while enduring torment.... What are you going to do with me to-day?" she added, glancing around with frank curiosity at an easel which was set with a full-length virgin canvas. "Portrait," he replied, tersely. "Oh," she said, surprised. He had never before painted her clothed. From moment to moment, as she leisurely breakfasted, she glanced around at the canvas, interested in the new idea of his painting her draped; a trifle perplexed, too. "Louis," she said, "I don't quite see how you're ever going to find a purchaser for just a plain portrait of me." He said, irritably: "I don't have to work for a living _every_ minute, do I? For Heaven's sake give me a day off to study." "But--it seems like wasted time--" "What is wasted time?" "Why just to paint a portrait of me as I am. Isn't it?" She looked up smilingly, perfectly innocent of any self-consciousness. "In the big canvases for the Byzantine Theatre you always made my features too radiant, too glorious for portraits. It seems rather a slump to paint me as I am--just a girl in street clothes." A singular expression passed over his face. "Yes," he said, after a moment--"just a girl in street clothes. No clouds, no sky, no diaphanous draperies of silk; no folds of cloth of gold; no gemmed girdles, no jewels. Nothing of the old glamour, the old glory; no sunburst laced with mist; no 'light that never was on sea or land.' ... Just a young girl standing in the half light of my studio.... And by God!--if I can not do it--the rest is worthless."